I duly went to the doctors 4 days after the last post. I tried to run again on the Wednesday, but struggled, and dropped the physic’s letter in the same day.
The appointment was a bit of a farce. The letter had been mislaid at the surgery so she hadn’t seen it and hadn’t heard of the condition but agreed to refer me to radiography anyway, and advised me not to run and despite the arrival of some weird compression/support shorts which might help, I did as I was told and wallowed in self pity for the last 2 weeks; predictably finding comfort in food.
This means I’ve only ran 10 times in the last 9 weeks (with 2 of those being aborted with pain) and my weight is a little over a stone heavier than it was in mid October.
That’s left me bouncing between two extremes of outlook.
If I’m feeling positive I compare myself to this time last year. I’m nearly 2 stones lighter than I was then, have ran slightly more in the last few weeks than I did in the corresponding weeks last year and I’ve ran better as a whole during the year. Even the cautious and flabby 4 miles I did yesterday (after 20 days off) was at a comparable pace to tempo runs at the start of the year, and it’s left me without any great increase in pain.
On the other hand, if I’m feeling negative then I compare myself with where I was on target for reaching by now, only a couple of months ago: I’d expected to be some 22lbs lighter than now and have a solid base of 30 miles a week running since May to set me up for training for a 3:30 in Paris.
I’m hopeful that whilst I can’t expect to do any races, hills, speedwork or long slow runs for the foreseeable future (and that injury resolution could be several months away) I should be able to do 3 or even 4 short easy paced runs a week if I wear the support shorts. If I can that might just be enough to help get rid of a little weight in the new year.
At present I’m hoping to drop a couple of pounds before Christmas, easily rediscover them during a week of festive gorging and then do as I did this year and hit the new year with a bang.
Realistically Paris isn’t going to happen for me next year but there’s an outside chance I might make a May marathon or, more likely, an autumn one.
