(Not) One size fits all

It’s been nine days since Manchester, and I’ve managed just one short run so far. I’ve walked quite a lot – as required by my job and commute – and I’ve been swimming once as well. But my foot is still not entirely happy with me, so today I bit the bullet and visited my physiotherapist.

Like many runners, I am prone to self-diagnosis. There is a huge amount of information online about running injuries and rehab, and if you add my medical background to that, it’s easy to feel like I should be able to figure out what’s wrong and how to treat it without any external help. Experience has taught me that this isn’t necessarily the case, and today’s visit has once again confirmed that!

The problem with looking for injury advice online is that it mostly covers the more common running injuries – things like plantar fasciitis and ITBS – but it can often be very tricky to identify less common injuries. And crucially, even if you can correctly work out what’s wrong, without the experienced eyes of a physiotherapist, you won’t necessarily be able to work out why it’s wrong, and therefore what best to do to fix it.

Even common running injuries can arise in many different ways. Everyone has slightly different anatomy, and a slightly different running style. To properly treat an injury, you need to know why it’s happened. Your treatment can then focus on two things: the immediate rehab of the injury, and the more long-term alterations that prevent it recurring.

Which is why today’s visit was so beneficial. The first thing I learnt was that my foot pain isn’t plantar fasciitis. My online research hadn’t been able to provide me with any other suggestions for the pain, but my injury didn’t quite fit with the descriptions. My pain was on the bottom of my foot, but more along the outside edge than under the heel. So when I was told I had a peroneal tendonitis, I wasn’t really surprised. The explanation of why it happened also made sense: my right leg has always been stronger than my left leg, and this, combined with the fact that I’d struggled with a hamstring problem in my left leg earlier this year, meant that I’d been favouring my right leg and consequently overloading my right foot. So I’ve come away with reassurance (that this injury should clear up relatively quickly) and a plan of action. More strength training and a gradual return to running, and hopefully I’ll be upping my mileage again soon.

The major lesson from all this? If something hurts, don’t rely on the internet, or even the well-intentioned non-specialist (my doctor friends are not particularly helpful when it comes to running injuries!). Your best bet is to visit a good physiotherapist, who can give you the right advice for you. Like most of medicine, running injuries are not one-size-fits-all, so don’t treat them as if they are.

Marathon Blues

The week after a marathon is a bit like the week before: frustrating. If you’re anything like me, you find yourself spending a lot of time wishing that you could go for a nice long run but aware that it’s a really bad idea. Every article I’ve read about marathon recovery drums it into you: a long run like a marathon damages your muscles and stresses your immune system. It is important to take time off to allow these to recover, otherwise getting back to running will take even longer. But it’s not easy.

Last time I ran a marathon, I gave myself a stress fracture in one of my metatarsals. I blame running in the wrong shoes, with a poor running technique. As soon as I crossed the line, my foot was in excruciating pain and for the next two days I could barely walk. The final result was 6 weeks in an air cast and no running for nearly 8. I hated it.

This time round, I finished feeling fine. My quads and hamstrings hurt, but no more than expected. And then Monday was fine. I walked to and from work, which is just part of my usual routine. I felt sore but ok. On Tuesday, I started walking to work and my foot started hurting. The idea that I may have another stress fracture made me want to cry, the thought of missing out on weeks of running was almost too much to bear. A clear x-ray and a quick assessment from one of my colleagues did little to reassure me. And now, three days later, it still hurts, though not quite as much.

The period after a big event is always a struggle to get through, because so much energy and time has gone into planning for it – Marathon Blues is not an unfamiliar term to anyone who runs them! Adding potential injury to that makes things even more stressful. But I’ve got enough time as a runner – and a doctor – under my belt to know that, no matter how much I want to just go for a run and see how it is, that will only lead to more heartache down the line. So the plan for now is this: rest from running. Walk a little, because that’s unavoidable. Swim if your desperate. And if it still hurts by next week, see the physio. But no running until the pain is gone.

Maybe I’ll just start looking at which race to run next instead…

Asics Greater Manchester Marathon

My job often requires me to work long shifts. But even on the longest of them, I don’t have to wake up before 6am. So it came as something of a surprise that I’d already been awake for a good twenty minutes when my alarm went off at 5.50am this morning. But I suppose pre-race nerves are not to be messed with.

The trip to the race village went smoothly, much to my relief, and was partly shared with another runner who hailed from Scotland – in fact, very near where my Granddad lives. I love how friendly people are around big races like this. I suppose when you’re all sharing the pre-race jitters, it’s nice to talk it out!

I spent the last hour before the race trying to work out how many times I could queue for the loo, whether or not I was about to be sick, and hoping I wasn’t losing too much energy shivering. When the starting gun went off and we finally started moving, I was more than ready.

I’d chosen to run with the 3hr29min pace group – partly by design (I was aiming for a 3hr 30min finish) and partly by default (they were standing right in front of me when I reached the start). The group’s plan was to go off at a faster pace to allow for a fall off in the second half. I wasn’t sure how sensible this all sounded, but as the pace didn’t seem too awful, I decided to give it a chance.

The result was this: I ran most of the race at 7:46 pace, which felt far more comfortable than I expected. When we passed the half-marathon point in 1 hour 43 minutes, I still felt good. And when we hit a short downward hill a few minutes later and I found myself pulling ahead of the group…I decided to go with it. I managed to hold that pace, or thereabouts, until just after the 20 mile mark – further than any training run I’d done.

And then it started to hurt. The last 6 miles were painful. My legs felt heavy, my knees were screaming, and it was all I could do to keep going. But by that stage, you can slip into countdown mode. Six miles is, after all, just a 10k run. And then you can tick off the miles; I don’t consider a 5 mile run to be a ‘long run’ these days; our social club runs are around 4 miles long; I can run 3 miles home from nights; even my shortest taper run was over 2 miles; and I can always run 1 mile…

If I’d been able to breathe a little more easily, I would have burst into tears as I crossed the line. 3hours, 27 minutes, 20 seconds from the gun. A new PB, a London (and Boston) qualifying time, and better than I’d dared to hope for.

Manchester did herself proud with this race. The community support was great – lots of cheering, high fives and bowls of jelly babies. I really enjoyed the course: it has a lot of out and back sections which means you get to see the front runners zoom past, and then the boost of knowing you’re not too near the back! It was well organised, everyone was friendly, and I’d definitely come back.

Not my first rodeo...

Tomorrow is the Asics Manchester Marathon 2015. Which, in the context of the blogging world, makes this a slightly odd time to start a new blog. The training is done, and the taper's nearly finished. I've spent 16 weeks or so dealing with fitting in runs around a punishing work rota, the scare of a potentially nasty knee problem, and the challenges of getting the diet right for me. All that remains is the last twelve or so hours (ok, it's actually just under 16 hours until the starting gun goes), and theoretically those should be the easy bit. And ideally, most of them should be spent sleeping.

But anyone who has run a marathon before, or had any big event to attend, or any important exam/presentation/meeting/etc., knows that that's not really how we work. Because the day and night before is almost always the worst 24 hours to live through.

As the title of this post implies, this isn't my first marathon. Just under 11 months ago, I ran the Stockholm marathon with some colleagues from work. I had a blast, loved the whole weekend, and knew as soon as I'd crossed the finish line that I'd want to have another go. It's amazing how quickly you forget how hard and painful the whole thing actually is!

When I signed up to run Manchester this year, I didn't spend much time thinking about what the day would actually be like. I knew I'd probably stay at my grandma's the day before the race, and I suspected that trains and metros would be an important part of the planning, but that's about it. It didn't occur to me that the most painful bit of my training for this marathon would be the realisation that, even though I was much closer to home, I'd actually feel a lot more lonely.

See, last year, I ran with friends. And even though we were in a foreign city with not much in the way of on-site cheerleaders, that meant that we had a built in support group. We travelled to Stockholm together, we carb-loaded in a local pasta restaurant together, we got up together in the morning and made our way to the start line together. And with the nerves building to a frenzy by that point, the company was vital.

This year, I've travelled to Manchester on my own - but surrounded by groups of friends making their way up for the same purpose. I'll spend the night with my Gran, who I can't really talk to about the marathon. And tomorrow, I'll drag myself out of bed at the crack of dawn, and make my way to the start line by myself. By now, the nerves and the loneliness have combined, and I've spent most of the past day feeling pretty miserable about the whole thing. I know that my friends and family all have good reasons for not being here to cheer me on, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt to think that there'll be no one yelling my name as I run, and no one to congratulate me when I cross the line - or commiserate if things don't go as plan.

So this leaves me with one final, big task before I can stand at the start line and feel prepared. Tonight, I have to remember why I'm doing this. I have to remind myself why I loved running in Stockholm last year, and why I'm pushing myself to do it again. And there are plenty of good reasons, and importantly, they're mostly about me, and not about other people. I'm doing this to impress myself, not for any one else. I'm doing it because I want to be better than I was a year ago, because I want to prove to myself that I can go faster, feel stronger. I'm doing it because I love running, and I love having goals, and I love both training and competing. And that's why, when I stand on the line at 9am tomorrow, I'm going to focus on the nervous excitement, and nothing else.

Wish me luck!

Hello there!

Starting a new blog is a bit of a challenge. I've tried a couple of times in the past, and quickly run out of time and/or enthusiasm. So why would this be any different? Well, the problem I've had in the past is that the things I've chose to blog about have been either time limited or passing fancies. But this is different. Because this time, I want to talk about running.

Why is that different? Well, for a start, it's something I've been doing for years, and something I've been enjoying for years. And it's something that becoming more and more a focus of my life as I get dragged into the whirlpool of parkruns, marathons and club running. It's also something I'm now reading more about, and consequently wanting to talk more about. Which is getting a little boring for my friends and family, I think, so I've decided to channel that somewhere else.

Finally, why would anyone want to read it? There are so many blogs about running around, that I'm not likely to have anything brand new to add. And there's nothing about me as a runner that particularly grabs the attention: I'm neither a professional nor a newbie, I'm not training for anything that other people haven't done hundreds of times before, and I've not got any exciting insight to share. But then, that's not really what blogging is about, not for me anyway. I want to blog because I like writing, and I like talking about things that interest me. And if people are interested enough to read, that's great. And if they aren't...well, as long as I'm having fun.