Running - why do we do it?! by Raring_to_go

Okay...so why the weird title? Well I figured that saying I was going 'back to square one' would imply that I was going right back to the beginning and everything I had done before wouldn't count. But having looked back over the last five years since I started running (having done 89 races, including 3 marathons) I thought surely I am due some credit...so 'square one and three-quarters' it is.'

I went for my manipulation and deep tissue massage as mentioned in my last post. What the therapist found was a load of muscle knots in my quads. I knew they were there as I could feel them even when using the foam roller. There's a kind of 'bump' followed by pain if you put weight on the tight spot. The massage was pretty painful then, but perhaps not quite as bad as the one I had after the 17 miler when all the problems began. It seems as if the speed work I had been doing alongside the long runs were just a bit too much for my quads to deal with. Anyway, the upshot was that I was left with some lovely bruises (emerging the day after the massage, and lasting over a week) and was advised not to do any training at all for a week. Yes, that meant no cycling and certainly no running!  Not fun.  But I had got as far as finding a possible reason and a possible solution to end this injury misery, so I felt compelled to stick with the plan. This involved rest for a week, then two short runs a week for the following fortnight (plus swimming, walking etc) and continuing use of the foam roller, stretches and a quad strengthening exercise.

Week 1 wasn't great, but I did do some marshaling at the first Roundhay Park Run 5K - so at least I did something useful and was not totally alienated from the running community. I will go back there to run it when I'm fit again.

Week 2 - I did one plod of 3 miles and another of 4 miles, plus a 40 min swim at the weekend. So far so good.

Week 3 (i.e. this week) has so far involved a 5 mile run/walk which I did at 10:33 min/mile pace overall - not bad considering the run/walk ratio was 3:1, so I was walking 25% of the time!  The quads are definitely improving and the range of movement seems better too. In fact, today is probably the first day when my quads feel 'normal' and I am not reminded by odd aches and twinges when I walk.  I am not going to rush back too quickly though and jeopardise my recovery, and have opted for a swim this afternoon and then another easy run on Thursday.

I have decided to pull out of the Great Selby Bike Ride. Although cycling causes much less impact on the legs than running, you are still working the quads quite a lot. So all that manic cycling I was doing a few weeks ago was not really helping my recovery. I will probably do an easy bike ride this week, but going straight from not cycling for over a fortnight to suddenly cycling 45 miles would simply be daft. Plenty of time to cycle again over the summer, after all.

So, feeling rather more positive (though it's not great to see that my fitness has diminished, plus a weight gain of 4 lbs ).  I am looking forward to the first Jane Tomlinson 10K at Hull on 15th May. If necessary I'll run/walk that too, or simply jog it and not worry about the finish time. It's a charity event after all, and I'll treat it as my come-back race.