This should
have been the pre marathon blog special talking about the joys of the taper,
the strange feelings pre marathon and the nervous anticipation before the big
day.
The human body (or is that the runners body!) is a strange,
fickle thing. My last blog detailed one
of my best blocks of training for some time,
my training just coming right at the right time and almost ready for
tapering.
In an attempt to squeeze one last session in the build up I
started an 8 x 800m session with the intention of getting a good session in the
bag…not too fast but a nice solid 800m interval session to top up the training
I had done so far. Three intervals down
I pulled up with the usual suspect of the left hamstring….not a case of the
feeling like I have been shot by a sniper more like someone grabbing hold of my
hamstring and squeezing it tight and not letting go…a tightness that also had
the effect of sending a numbing feeling into my calf. With 10 days to go until the marathon timing
could not have been much worse.
With a couple of days of gentle jogging and the feeling that
it might not be as bad as I first thought I pushed myself on a steady 6 miler
to see what it felt like at marathon pace.
Disaster struck again – same old same old…..At this point the marathon
seemed further away than ever.
So it was off to the physio again…..It seems the hamstring
is not ruptured but the issue is more of old scar tissue that seems to be
laying on the sciatic nerve and causing the hamstring to tighten at random and
unpredictable moments. The pain in my
hamstring has been worse after driving for anything over 30 minutes. The physio session included something new
to me which was Myofascial Release. This
is a gentle therapy, consisting of a mixture of light stretching and massage
work.
A typical session consists of hands-on massage strokes in order to release
tension from the fibrous bands of the muscles, bones, nerves and joints, by
unblocking any scar tissue or adhesions due to injury in the muscles and surrounding
tissues combined with light to moderate
traction and twisting strokes to apply the appropriate tension on the soft
tissue. The treatment is a long slow
treatment concentrating on lengthening the muscle to achieve a full reflex range of the muscle.
I have to say
that the treatment has worked very well and I am back running. There is still a little bit of stiffness in
the hamstring so I am not fully back to normal and I think given the nature of
the injury it may take a bit of time to get back to full speed but it’s a step
in the right direction. Training this
week has been good with a decent four mile tempo run at sub 6 minute miling, a
very good hill session with 8 long reps completed with over 1000 feet of
climbing an 8.5 mile steady run at a decent pace and a park run effort in
redcar (18.11) yesterday on my way to a good old 50 mile week with a bit of
quality thrown in.
Its good to
be back running again and I am sure if pushed I could have completed the
marathon but back to the Chimp versus Computer theory….the chimp would be on
the start line at Chester today but the
Computer has the Cross Country season on his mind.
I have my
eyes on five races over the winter:
Abbey Dash
10km in November
North East
Cross Country in December
Northern
Cross Country in January
National
Cross Country in February
BMAF Vets
Cross Country in March
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