Something went a bit wrong on Sunday....

Well, after the previous weeks record breaking half marathon and a week away with work and no running I thought Sundays 17 mile run would be quite straight forward.... I was wrong...

I'm not sure where things started to go wrong, I decided to run with the marathon training group, something I haven't done for awhile, because the route they were following almost matched the one I was planning on running anyway and I thought it would be good to have the company.

I suppose the first mistake I made was the pacing group I joined. I normally run my long runs at about 10:30 min/miles.... I had a choice of joining the10 min group or the 11 min group... I joined the 10. Why I did I'm not sure, most probably because after running a half marathon at nearly 9 min miles I thought I could do it. The 10 min group were running faster than that so I slowed down a bit and let them get ahead of me... I was still running faster than 10 min/miles though.... After about 5 miles I could feel a slight twinge in my knee, the same twinge I had when I was running the HM the week before. I must admit I thought a week without running had fixed it.

I slowed down again and made it to about 10 miles... At this point the faster runners were coming back the other way passing me. One of them stopped to ask if I was ok (did I look THAT bad ???) at which point I said no and burst in to tears. He stopped, gave me a hug, turned me round and got me going again, slowly though... I managed another few miles and then needed to walk the last 3 miles back.. One of the other marathon ambassadors stopped and walked with me to make sure I was ok and to keep me company.

I'm still not sure what the problem with my knee is/was, all I know is that is was quite painful to bend and put weight on it.... But today (Tuesday) it seems fine.... I have been stretching it plenty and doing some foam roller exercise on my IT band (and that DOES hurt !)

I don't know if my week away wasn't as restful as I thought it was, after all I was on my feet lecturing for 8 hours a day and the travelling every evening... I know I don't sleep very well in strange hotels and each night was a different place and thanks to Chiltern railways I ended up standing in the train for most of the way home...

I don't know if I just pushed too hard to start with at a pace I couldn't maintain.... I don't know if it was just a tight muscle or if it is some other problem.

So, where does that leave me ?

I'm going to cut back on the running this week, a nice gentle 3 miles today to see how things go, keep up with the stretches and foam roller exercises... If today is ok then 5 miles tomorrow, 4 on Thursday with a long run of less than 10 on Saturday....

I have revised my training plan to drop one run a week... I guess I'm having to admit that I'm not 19 anymore :)

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