It has been a long time since I’ve updated my blog for which I apologise.  The Stockport clinic is getting more and more established in the area and, along with my running, has been taking up a lot of my time.

A lot has happened since I last added to my blog so I’m going to split it into a few entries, so that it doesn’t turn into a huge lengthy bit of writing…and to add to the suspense of course!

Last time I wrote, I had finished my first Half Marathon, had struggled with injuries and had completed about 700 miles.  Leading upto the Stockholm Marathon in June, the weeks from April June contained much of the same sort of pattern and drama.

After my reasonable performance in the Wilmslow Half Marathon, I was feeling good, and ploughed on with my training, gradually increasing weekly mileage, and introducing more speed sessions in preparation for the Great Manchester Run in May.  A week prior to the Great Manchester run, after a 23 mile training run completed in little over 3 hours, I was feeling even more positive.  But then what I had been dreading all along happened…an injury, and one significant enough to stop me running too.  A few days after my longest run to date, I was doing a gentle jog and felt my right foot begin to hurt.  I “sensibly” carried on and used the usual ice and Ibuprofen that had got me this far.  Unfortunately, the pain didn’t settle and I was forced to rest.   I managed to complete the Manchester run a few days later in a respectable 42mins and 23 seconds, but my foot was very painful by the end of it.

My foot was now so painful that I was walking with a limp and running wasn’t a possibility.  Thankfully, I have one huge advantage over most people when it comes to training for a marathon…the best physiotherapy available, whenever I need it.  With only 3 and a half weeks left until the Marathon, I was having daily Physio, on top of treating myself and managing to single-handedly boost Ibuprofen sales to record highs.  Despite, this my foot was only settling very slowly, and the very distressing realisation dawned on me that I might not be able to complete the Marathon.

I didn’t run for nearly three weeks, and very slowly my foot improved, thanks to a lot of hard work from my colleagues.  Five days before the Marathon I ventured out for my first run…a gentle 8 miler.  To my relief the foot held up to the test well, but I realised that my fitness had suffered hugely.  With only a few days left until the Marathon, I knew I couldn’t over-train to try and recapture some of my fitness for risk of further injury, and depleting my energy levels, so I fitted in a few more gentle 8 mile runs, and then packed for Stockholm!

This experience made me realise just how crushing a blow it must be for an athlete to get injured prior to a major event.  Here I was, a totally novice Marathon runner leading up to my first marathon, and I was utterly depressed at the thought of not being able to compete to the best of my abilities.  I can’t imagine how I would feel if I had trained all my life for the olympics or something only to be ruled out at the last minute.  However, the fact that I had trained for 8 months to be ready for the race, pushed me on…there was no way I was going to back out now even if it meant being in agony from the first mile! 

The other thing that struck me from having this injury, and my training in general, is that I really don’t know how anyone without a medical knowledge and Physio on tap ever manages to cross the start line, let alone the finish line!  When I think back to the number of times I treated myself, or taped something, or got a colleague to treat me, I realise that I wouldn’t have got anywhere near my goal without a lot of help and knowledge of the human body, so I have the utmost respect for anyone who does manage it!

When reading my first blog entry, some of the more observant amongst you will have noticed that there was mention of summer.  The decision to run the marathon was made in mid-September and as such the next few entries will be a “catch up” of the training so far…

…So, the running had begun and it had become very apparent that, if I was going to transport myself 26.2 miles without the use of some form of powered vehicle, I was going to need to do a lot of training!  I began the process of sifting through the thousands of “advice” articles on the internet, finally calling a halt to this process when an article informed me that “running a marathon is hard work”…a shocking revelation!

However, after many hours of avoiding running by sitting on the sofa finding advice on training, a few common themes arose.  Some I already knew, such as the need for a high carbohydrate diet.  What I didn’t know was that Jelly Babies, Jaffa Cakes and Fig Rolls are good sources of carbohydrates…cue a trip to the shops to buy as many Jelly Babies and Jaffa Cakes as I could: the Fig rolls had sadly run out (or maybe I didn’t look as hard for those).  With my new diet planned, although not entirely revolving around sweets, I just had to plan my runs.  Again there was a huge number of training plans online but the gist of them was a need for a mix of shorter runs, interval and speed training and a longer run each week.  Finally the only thing left to do was actually start running.

Over the next few weeks, I started running three or four times a week, mainly just trying to get into running, work on the distances a little and try and work on my fitness a lot!

The other nugget of information that I found was that if you do a lot of running you will need to eat more…something I was more than happy to follow, but it did make a huge difference to my energy levels.  Running the same distance on a day when I hadn’t eaten a good amount was infinitely harder than on a day when I had eaten a sensible amount – that is not to say that running that distance was anything other than hard work on any day though!

The distances increased from 3 miles, to 5 miles, to 9 miles over these weeks, more from learning what to eat and how to pace myself than a huge increase in fitness.  As a novice runner, I was very much learning as I went, using some of my Physio knowledge and some trial and error!