17 Miles today and have to be honest legs feeling tight in the back of the calves and heavy really isn’t filling me with positivity for the mileage ahead. My legs haven’t felt like this for a couple of weeks and no idea why they’ve started again, just hoping like in the past once I get going they will keep carrying me.
I woke this morning to discover no bananas left in the fruit bowl! That’s just porridge this morning then! As you can imagine not a happy bunny I like my pre run banana, but with no shops opening till 11am hoping it dose not have too much of an effect on my run today fuel wise.
I was hoping for a dry day today, no such look! As I gazed out the patio windows whilst eating my porridge it was absolutely throwing it down, on the plus side the wind didn’t look too bad. I suppose you cant have everything and the weather could be anything in April.
After breakfast on went the gear and I set my rucksack up whilst waiting for the porridge to settle.
I’d planned in to try using some gels further into the run today alongside Tailwind to see if this would sort the hunger issues I’d had in past two long runs.
After some pre run stretching I set off down the trail towards the canal, my aim at least 16 miles today but really wanted to see 17.
The rain had stopped and in fairness after about 3 miles in I needed to remove my gloves due to things warming up. I fell into my comfortable marathon pace more or less straight away knowing I had many miles to cover I didn’t want to go to quick.
I seemed to reach Renishaw and then the turning for towards the canal so quick today that I had to double check my watch in case I was going quicker than I thought. It turns out I wasn’t.
Running along side the canal made me realise how much rain we had had the past few days and the effects the canal was almost touching the pathway in some places and about 4.5 miles into my run I was faced with raging waters coming from the field into the canal straight across my pathway, no exaggeration this was a welly job to cross. I held onto the fence as the current of the flowing water was quiet strong. The last thing I needed was a damage foot or ankle. After a couple of seconds analysing the situation I realised their was no choice but to go through it and grin and bear the wet feet for the remainder of the run. I was going to take a picture of the water gushing from the field into the canal but by the time I got back to that part it had gone and there wasn’t even really a puddle!
After that I decided with feet sodden no need to hop my around the bigger puddles and just ran through them. It was nice to run along the canal for a change of scenery past Hollingwood hub and onto tapton lock.
It was about mile 9 ish after having turned around at Tapton lock to run the route back home, I started to feel the twinge in my knee, the one that had been popping up in on some of my longer runs recently on the outside of my knee. I knew the mileage I was doing was getting longer, so never expected to not feel any aches or pains throughout training but this just didn’t feel right.
For the first few miles it was there but didn’t really have an effect on my running then it started getting sorer and by mile 15 every time my foot hit the floor I could feel it. At times I felt like like my heel on my right foot was pushing out but my knee was pushing inwards almost like they were fighting against each other.
Although my legs and lungs in them self felt strong and able to carry me so much further, the last mile up home really did take its toll on my knee and I was pleased when I walked into the back garden.
I cooled down and stretched before going into the house and that’s when the soreness really hit me. Simple things climbing up and down stairs was really sore. Something told me this wasn’t just fatigued legs from the mileage ran this was something more troublesome and I should listen to my body. Ice, rest and maybe some googling needed although deep in my thoughts I think I always knew it was ITT band related but with 6 weeks to go so didn’t want to hear everyone’s or no running for several weeks even months to heal it I didn’t have that time.
