It's been nearly a week since I last posted, and there has been a fair bit going on in that time.
As I mentioned, I have a knee niggle and it is still there but I'm pleased to say that I got the miles in that were on my plan last week. I actually managed 35 miles last week with a 16 LSR, which is slightly more than what was planned but I did this because I basically missed the whole of the previous week.
I had the day off work on Friday to a) get the LSR in and b) go to a stag weekend. The LSR itself wasn't great as I suffered with toilet issues for the first time in a long time. I needed to stop 3 times and I remembered after about 12 miles that I had absent-mindedly been very liberal with the semi-skimmed milk that morning, so I think that is what caused the issue. Importantly though I got the mileage in and in the end was out on my feet for about 2.5 hours, and overall the knee wasn't too bad.
After the run, I had a couple of things to do around the house and then headed off to the stag do weekend which was just a short train ride away. I was really in two minds about drinking alcohol on the weekend as I didn't want to disrupt my marathon training too much. However, I am not able to attend the associated wedding so I decided to have a few drinks on the Friday and not have any on Saturday. I was quite pleased with this and think I struck a good balance and I don't feel that I had too much to drink on the Friday.
Sunday was arguably the biggest day of the British running calendar as it was the Virgin London Marathon. I got up early from the hotel to get back in time to watch the race and I'm really glad I did. I knew about 25 runners who were doing the event and the VLM website made it really easy to track runners who I wanted to follow. The website gave 5K, half marathon and full distance splits together with an estimated finish time. When the elite runners had finished, the BBC provided a "red button" service whereby I could watch the finish line and I'm pleased to say that I saw 5 people I knew cross the line to finish their marathons. The data on the VLM site together with this red button service really added something to the whole viewing experience. Also, by club's Facebook page was very active on that morning so it was a great time to watch the VLM this year. I am definitely going to enter the ballot (which opens on 29th March) and this time hope I actually get a place in 2014 rather than hope that I don't!
I mentioned that one of my friends did Paris a couple of weeks ago. He managed 2hr58 that day and he also did VLM where he managed a brilliant 3hr09 only two weeks later!
After I had watched a lot of the race I went out for a short 5 mile run which was okay but my knee was playing up a bit. I had actually booked a sports therapist/massage session for tonight (Monday) as I was still worried about my knee and I wanted to give myself every chance of getting to the start line in 2 weeks time. It's the first sport therapy/massage session I've attended and the therapist was very well recommended by my running club and he offers a discount to club members.
Before doing any treatments, he insisted on doing a pretty thorough examination of me and took notes relating to certain things about my stance, my spine, the length of my legs etc. He thinks I have one leg slightly longer than the other one which could be causing some issues. Also, he confirmed that my hamstrings are tight but concluded that the root cause of this is because I have tight hip flexors. After giving my legs a thorough massage using a massage machine etc, he gave me some specific stretches to help with the tight hip flexors. All in all, I was in there for 1.5 hours so that was £15 well spent! I think I am going to have another session the week before my marathon to give myself the best chance of getting to the start line in good shape.
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