After last week - here’s how week 7 panned out....

The plan was: speed session – 7 x 800 meters; tempo run – 8 miles; long run – 17 miles. 

Last week was one of those where with work and kids to juggle it was hard to know where the runs were going to slot in.  I wanted to give my hip as much as a rest as possible before I attempted a speed session so started the week with my tempo run.  This was going to have to be done on Tuesday morning after the kids went off to school and before I went to work (which was going to make me very late but as I’m my own boss I can get away with it!).

I’d been icing and stretching since last Sundays run plus taking ibuprofen; but it was clear as soon as I started running on Tuesday that my hip wasn’t happy and there was going to be nothing ‘tempo’ about the run.  I also knew that 8 miles wasn’t looking likely either.  In the end I did 5 miles at a dismally slow pace and called it a day.

Clearly I needed to give it a little longer to settle so decided to do no further running until the weekend.  I would do a park run on the Saturday instead of the speed session then my long run (hopefully) on the Sunday.  This would give me 3 clear days without running. 

I was still pretty chilled as I was confident that it wasn’t serious and with some TLC and reduced mileage I’d soon be fine.

Come Saturday my hip felt fine – but the problem has been that I wouldn’t know until I start running whether it would be OK.  And as soon as I started running I knew it was not OK.  This wasn’t helped by the fact that parkrun was a mud bath.  I wasn’t in pain as such; just discomfort.  And it was enough to make me abandon the run after 1 ½ miles. 

Now I was no longer feeling chilled L.  I’ve so desperately wanted to stick to my plan and I couldn’t decide what to do about my 17 miles the next day.  Long story short I did a long session of yoga stretches on Saturday evening and massaged my hip with a tennis ball (thanks for the tip Max!).  I decided to set out on Sunday to see what would happen and promised myself that I would stop at the first sign of any pain so as not to aggravate it.  But to my utter surprise my hip felt almost absolutely fine!!  I knew it was there but that was all.  It didn’t come close to being painful throughout the whole run.  In fact I didn’t notice it at all in the final 5 miles but that’s because it paled into insignificance with the generally fatigue I was feeling all over! 

On the whole I enjoyed the run but it did start feeling tough at around 12 miles.  By the last mile I was so exhausted that I think I’d gone into a state of delirium.  Heaven knows what I must have looked like to the people that I passed!  But that’s 17 miles nailed.  It was very slow but considering I didn’t think I’d even be able to do one mile I’m very pleased with that!  It’s 2 more miles than last week and the most I’ve ran in over 1 ½ years. 

This last couple of weeks has been a sharp reminder that the road to marathon glory is not linear.  It would be wonderful if we could have a clear 16 weeks without work or domestic commitments; injury; or illness.  There are plenty of bumps and obstacles along the way and half of the battle is how we deal with them.

I will keep up with the treatment but am feeling hopeful that I can get back on track now.  It’s a step back week coming up too which helps - ‘only’ 13 miles for the long run this weekend. We’re doing an organised trail half marathon on Sunday which should be fun.

I hope everyone else is doing OK.