I have a long way to go to meet my fundraising target for the marathon which is less than two weeks away.
Right now, I would happily pay £750 not to run, so to make sure I go through the pain of covering the full 26 miles please help to raise more than that for the RNIB.
If you would like to participate in my pain, by donating, please click on the ‘Sponsor Me’ text which will take you through to my Justgiving page.
Thanks
I am carrying two injuries at the moment. The first is a ligament injury in my left knee, brought on by playing football, and the only cure is to run regularly and often, which seems to alleviate the pain.
The other is shin splints in my right leg which is a pretty painful muscle condition and the only cure is complete rest.
My legs are in a Catch 22 situation.
The obvious solution would be to go out for a long distance hop, leaving my right leg tucked up in bed, but the practicalities have proved too challenging to overcome. Instead I am letting them take turns at being the injured party.
When I first set out, my left knee feels like it has a knife inside it and is going to collapse but after about three miles or so the pain wears off. I enjoy the next half mile or so and then the shin splints on my right leg become more intrusive. It feels like I am wearing a shinpad inside my leg.
The curious outcome of this is that I lurch to the left for the first three miles, then run normally for half a mile, and then start lurching to the right. Before my weight loss I would have put this down to movement of the onboard ballast, but that is no longer an excuse.
But the good news is that after ten miles or so I get terrible back ache and I forget all about my legs.
A childhood regression has been an unexpected side-effect of my preparations for the London Marathon.
Before I set off an a training run I know I am going to be be at least an hour, and yet no further than 100 metres down the road and I need a wee. What this will mean on race day I hate to think as 26 miles is a very long way to run when all you can think of is running taps, fountains and flushing cisterns.
And as soon as I have jogged the first few steps away from home the familiar refrain of ‘are we nearly there yet’ comes immediately into my mind. Every run just seems to take an age (actually given my speed it does).
I have taken to telling myself that unless I stop I’m going to be sick. But just like childhood, I’m ignored.
All that aside, I’m pretty pleased with progress so far. I am now 12lbs lighter, than when I made my first plodding steps, and I am regularly running eight miles or so.
But I am now struggling with my first injury. Having foolishly started playing seven a side football again, I have done something very painful to my knee. But having gone two days without training, the guilt set in, so yesterday I forced myself to go out on a six mile run.
It actually wasn’t as painful as I expected, but I am hobbling around this morning barely able to put one foot in front of the other.
My wife has dismissed my misfortunes as a symptom of my age; she obviously doesn’t realise I’m going through my second childhood.
I’m sitting on the other end of the emotional seesaw this morning.
Only two days ago I thought things were getting easier and was actually enjoying running.
Today came pain. Every step of my four mile run this morning hurt and it hurt everywhere. It was possibly the least enjoyable experience of my life.
Around two miles in I reached a 1 in 4 hill and I walked the last 50 metres of it. Yes walked. My will folded like paper.
And for the first time I questioned why I am putting myself through this experience. A question I should probably have asked myself before I optimistically put my trainers on for the first time.
Currently I am running 10 minute miles, and that is over 4 miles. I have to keep that up for 26 miles if I am going to come in under my target time of four and a half hours.
And if the first testing hill I experience breaks my spirit, how will I cope with true adversity in April?
