Having not run over last weekend, this week began with an 8 miler on Monday night, which took a shade over an hour to complete.
Tuesday sore another steady run, only 6 miles this time. I say steady, that was the plan, in fact this became a session with 3 lots of 3 to 4 minutes of tempo running, sepperated by recovery jogging.
As I finished I became aware of cramp at the bottom of my left calf, the one which I had trouble with before the Wokingham Half Marathon in February.
With London Marathon day being five weeks today, at the time of writing, I’m not about to take any risks that might result in injury, either one which effects my preparation over the next month or worse, puts me out of the marathon altogether.
I decided there was far more to lose than gain from my usual Thursday night run, so stayed at home with what turned out to be a poor Manchester City performance in the Europa League for company. The last time I picked up a calf niggle I wrote about how Sunday morning’s aren’t the most exciting times of the week without running, neither it turns out are Thursday nights.
The rest and attention from the hot water bottle(the latter designed to loosen muscles without putting any pressure on them) did the job, and I was back out this morning. The route was planned with a number of get out points early on in case the calf played up, but an hour in and all was fine. Today’s effort ended up being the 20 miles that was hoped for at the start of the week, the distance covered in 2 hours 41 minutes (or there abouts). There was no pain or stiffness in the calf afterwards.
I experimented with Powerbar Gels again, this time using blackcurrent, which, whilst still not being what I would choose to consume, was a considerable improvement on the strawberry and banana one I used last week.
Aside from some running-based discussions, topics covered with Andrew today included Brentfords win at Charlton yesterday, Tottenham removing AC Milan from the Champion’s League on Wednesday and the fantastic victory for Quins RL at St Helens on Friday night – once I’m done with this marathon my rugby league away trips will be back on.
Instead of a day out in Warrington next Sunday, it’s the final race before London, or, if you prefer, the third of the four race plan. Cranleigh 21 is something of a pre-London favourite. It will also be the longest I’ll run before April 17th.
Total for this week: 34 miles.
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