"To win means nothing without the will to prepare."

W13 D1, D2,D3 & D4 – A week of downs and ups (inc long run)

April 4, 2010

Only one blog this week following a relatively depressing start to the week. After Sundays enjoyable ‘free run’ I woke up Monday with my knee hurting more than previously and I was naturally a little bit worried. Tuesday was the same and instead of hitting to the streets for the scheduled interval session I went to the gym and thought I’d see what I could do on the treadmill, the answer – not much! After 200meters I packed it in not wishing to push my knee even more. I relocated to the cross train machine and spent 40mins on there and left the gym feeling very sorry for myself.

Wednesday I headed back to the gym, Laura made a comment in the morning which pushed me to get on the treadmill again, suggesting whether I would have run and trained last year given all the money I had raised, and I suspect the answer would have been yes. 8kms on the treadmill doing intervals at 12/15kmph and whilst my knee was a little painful to begin with after 5/10mins the pain resided.

Taking a similar approach on Thursday I once again headed to the gym and got on the treadmill for a lunchtime session, similar to Wednesday, after a few mins the pain seem to reside and allowed me to run for about 40mins/7kms. Did some stretches with the Foam Roller after and headed back to work.

On Thursday evening I had a massage session with Chris, this felt long overdue and I explained about my knee and was expecting him to tell me the worst – but he didn’t. He suggested I still headed out for my long run and if after 16/17 Miles I was still struggling with pains to call it a day. As usual, Chris seemed to fix the pains and possibly the mental worries I had and sent me on my way.

Friday was a Bank Hol and it wasn’t raining when I woke up so I thought I would give the long run a go. Route pre-organised a few days before I was going to head towards the river via Stratford and Mile End and then track back home via Hackney and the Lea Bridge Road. Two routes I have done many times before but I haven’t connected them together in the middle. Setting off at 10 my knee felt pretty good, podcast on the ipod and it wasn’t raining! After 10 miles or so, and arriving at the Tower of London I entered the area where I was most likely to go off of my route – and I did! For about 4 or 5 miles following I was just running with no real idea where I was going to end up. Eventually, somehow, I popped out at Kings Cross familiar running territory.

The run from Kings Cross to Angel is all uphill and quite tough something I had never really acknowledged when running the other way! After a couple more miles I arrived at Dalston, and near to where Laura had agreed to meet me. I stopped to phone her due to the fact I was late following the fore mentioned route messup and let her know I was still going strong *ahem*!

The next few miles flew by and I arrived at Laura at just shy of 18miles. When I spoke to her earlier I had suggested I maybe finishing at that point but I felt good so I carried on and put the final 2 miles in which is what I was hoping to do. At the end of the 20miles my splits were all still faster than 9min/mi which I was happy with and I definitely had more miles left in my legs – hopefully at least 6.2