w/e 28/3/10 – All we need is a little patience

Patience is a virtue apparently. Never one I’ve particularly possessed or been keen on possessing. If I want something, I try to make things happen. “Patience is a virtue” has always seemed to me to be the motto of the “lie back and wait for things to happen” brigade.

But patience is just what I’m having to learn at the moment.

Firstly, another trip to the osteo on Friday. The knee is really coming on well, and I’ve had a couple of decent hill runs where there has been no reaction at all….excellent! The ankle is healing although,as you would expect, it is still a bit limiting at this stage.

But I kept the appointment so he could have a look at the Achilles again. I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that it’s been worrying me. And, typically, you suddenly get a couple of high-profile Achilles tendon ruptures in footie matches on the tv!

So he had a look, declared it a lot less worrying than the previous week and, to some extent, reassured me that, out of the fairly decent number of people he sees with Achilles problems, well over 90% go on to a full recovery and only a very tiny proportion end up in rupture.

Which is not to say I won’t, but I’m doing all the right exercises, massaging the area to promote blood flow, reducing my running and upping the bike to reduce stress on it….nowt much more I can do!

So, having had a green (or at least amber going to green) light for resuming training, I got stuck into a run on Friday afternoon. Only a shortie, a bit sore from the Achilles having been prodded and poked, but enough to convince me that the knee is over the worst and I can start to get going again.

And I was looking forward to the weekend. I’d made the decision (in my own mind) to run Midgley Moor very slowly. Possibly even offer to be sweeper. And then Sunday was Blubberhouses Moor 25 miler. A chance for a lovely day out with Kirsten, some decent mileage and a feeling like things were moving again.

So it was a wee bit of a blow when I went down with a sickness bug on Friday evening! Friday night was spent in the bathroom or my head in a bowl, not sleeping! No chance of running Midgley, but I kept shoveling food in hoping to be fit for Sunday. Some hope! Lethargic is not the word, wiped-out is more suitable.

So another good weekend’s running missed, but it was great to see Kirsten have another good run at Midgley on Saturday (me and Rufus strolled around the lower part of the route) and then very proud of her for getting out and doing 25 miles on Sunday. She looked shattered last night! :-)

Hopefully I’ll pick up this week and get some good training in. We’re off to the Lakes Friday if the weather’s ok and this is the planned start of the training towards 19 June. Wish me luck!!

I did manage a couple of runs this week though! There was the run Friday, plus I headed out on a club run on Tuesday night, up onto Midgley Moor on a dreadful night, dark and wet. I loved it :-) It might have had something to do with the group being me and 6 ladies? ;-)

Plus a couple of sessions on the turbo trainer, of all things. This is going to become a more prominent feature of my training, not just between now and June, but from here onwards. I have to face facts, I’m getting older, I’ve got some injuries that belong to the “older runner” category, and if I want to prolong my running as long as possible, I need to mix it up a bit and take the weight off my feet quite literally.

So from now on, the plan is never to run more than 5 days a week, and cut that back to 4 in tough weeks. The balance of training will be on the bike, and I wouldn’t mind starting back in the pool as well. It’ll be interesting to see the effect it has…there are some very good runners who do most, if not all, of their training on bikes and they swear by it, both in terms of stamina and speed. Speed? Ah yes, I remember what that is, I used to have some in the dim and distant past!

So patience it is. Patience in getting over this run of bad health, patience in building up the mileage at a steady pace again, patience in seeing off this Achilles problem, and patience in changing my training routines and waiting to see the results that brings…….

Total for the week…..11 miles and 1,500ft! Plus 45mins on the TT!