Still happy though!
Last week was not one of my best. After my efforts on Sunday and my new personal best distance of 8 miles I was feeling quite good. Another session with my friendly physio and some not quite so friendly jabbing of thumbs deep into calf muscles confirmed that things muscular are improving, my foot pain is negligible and everything seems to be holding up to the return to full on "running" (I always hesitate to use that word - what I do is more of a joggy shuffling!). However, after a very bad night's sleep and what felt like the beginnings of a cold, I wasn't really in the mood for Tuesday's 50 minutes. I had planned to go and do it from the gym, in order to end up there so I could have a hot shower - you may recall a slightly throw-away comment in the last post about a leaky hot water tank? Upshot was, we had no hot water for three days... Anyway, I set off from the gym, deciding to run around the playing fields until I'd done enough, but could only manage about 15 paces before I had to stop. It felt like I'd been shot in the legs! My poor shins, worse than anything I'd had before, and seemingly out of nowhere. I decided to walk it and see if things eased, and after I'd been all the way round 1 1/2 times I tried a very slow jog again. This time I managed about 100 yards before I had to stop again, worried I was going to cause serious long term damage. I hobbled back to the shower, hobbled back to the car, got home and sat around feeling very sorry for myself.
Wednesday I was full of a cold, so took the advantage of a rest day to lounge around with alternate ice/heat on my shins and watch c*** telly; Thursday I felt a bit better but was scared of my legs so took another day off instead of doing the planned 40 minutes. I did walk into town later in the day; it's about 4 miles or so there and back, I took it very slowly and it didn't feel too painful, just a bit "unhappy" in the lower leg area. I couldn't afford another day off so on Friday, pretty much over the cold, I did a very slow plod of about half an hour, barely 2 1/2 miles.
Around to another weekend then! The weather forecast for Sunday was diabolical so I decided I'd do my long run on Saturday afternoon. I had to be thrown out by hubby mind you as I'd got too comfy on the sofa watching footy! A panicky message to my friendly physio about the soreness in the shins had resulted in the advice that my lovely moulded insoles, while brilliant for supporting my arches and helping the pain in the foot, may in fact be too firm to run on and be causing impact damage. So I took them out and replaced them with the factory fit squishier insoles and set off. I planned to do not too much as I was concerned about my shins, but in fact once I'd done a mile or so they felt much better so I carried on and ended up doing the full 1 3/4 hours covering 8.7 miles, albeit slower than last week. I had my audiobook on again, listening to a very interesting bit about ultra ultra long distance running (100 miles high up in the Rockies anyone?!) which kind of put my little suburban pootle into perspective! I'd got to within the half mile or so from home when it started to drizzle a tiny bit, but I thought it would be nice to cool down in a bit of drizzle, so I eased to a walk for the last bit. Within 100 yards it was blowing an absolute hoolie and chucking it down horizontally, out of nowhere!! So much for cooling down; I ran home as fast as I could and was completely drenched by the time I got in (to the garage, I wasn't allowed in the house!). I read later that there had been reports of mini tornadoes in parts of Surrey, perhaps that was it?!
After a lovely hot bath I went to the hospital to visit a friend who's just had a baby, then hubby and I went out for dinner. It's not all about running you know!
Today was just bloomin' wet, the whole way round. But I did it, I carried on as per the plan and got wet. After all, it may well rain on the day in April so I'd better get used to it. The nice thing was, my feet were very comfortable, even in the wet, no nasty blisters or anything so that's good. I was supposed to do 65 minutes today (this is quite a big week) but of course, once you get out you have to keep going till you get home, so it ended up a little bit longer - 6.7 miles in 76 minutes. I hope to crack 10 miles this weekend...
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