It's my 100th Post (I think), so time for me to celebrate making it this far. When I go back to the start I can see how far I've come, and that deserves a quiet high five. I've made it this far.
It is also my 13th week on my training schedule, and I'm a little off pace right now from where I wanted to be with my training plan. The last week I should have been hitting 24K long run and 10k recovery run, but the 'Beer Flu' (get it?) meant that I had to cut that in half managing a 14k and a 5k.
My left hip/glute is still giving me hell. I mean it's non stop pain each step I take. I had Osteo and a few nice clicks but something does not feel right still. It's been 3 months and I admit it's getting me down a bit. Just when you get one thing nailed, another pops up. Again I'm looking on the bright side, and at least it's better this problem rears up now rather than a couple of weeks before either the 100k or 300k challenge.
That said, it's pretty fucking frustrating. I was lamenting to my wife that literally every step I have run for the last year and a half (as well as the majority of the ones I have walked) have seen me in pain. It gets you down after a while.
I have some intense work on this area planned including Graston (also known as Scraping or Gua Sha). Devices that, as you can see, are more the tools of a Ted Bundy rather than a runner. My wife had a panicked moment when I opened the delivery and said 'it puts the lotion in the basket'...
It's pretty painful but worked wonders for my achilles and peroneal issues. I'm hoping to get the same result on my hip even though the tools are a little scary. I'm also combining with more osteo and physio this coming fortnight coming.
All is an investment of time and money that I need to make in order to get myself right. I'm happy to do the work, in fact I enjoy doing it. The problem is doing the miles in pain and discomfort from the get-go. I guess it's all strengthening my resolve and building my pain tolerance for what is to come. As the SAS say 'train hard, fight easy'.
You can see the stats on my training progress here:
As you can see I'm just about holding fitness since I went down with Covid. Granted, it's not a disaster, simply a setback. The clock keeps ticking though, and with 7 weeks until I run 50k, and 11 weeks until I tackle the 100k again, I need to get on top of the hip problem sharpish. As it is right now, I could just about struggle through a 50, but a 100 would be a big problem.
I kept pretty active during the last week, as we had a family holiday to Edinburgh. Lots of walking and managed to get the family to hike to the top of Arthur's seat. I ate poorly, but it's a holiday. Given all the walking and hiking we did over the 4 days, I don't feel too guilty and didn't do too much damage to my weight loss efforts. My weight holding around 101kg presently. The hike up Arthur's seat was probably my favourite day. Despite the kids grumbling at the foothills, my son started to get his adventure on and proceeded to take us to the summit, like a floppy haired mountain goat.
I just think it's important in today's world to have our kids connect with the outdoors. He was especially delighted to reach the top first, and to see how far he'd climbed. Given how my ass felt from the hip issues, I know I was :-)
The following day my wife and I managed to get a sneaky 5km run in around Holyrood Park and Arthur's seat. Despite being VERY windy, it just gave me a little taste of some of the Scottish terrain that awaits me in 7 months' time. I'll sign off this 100th post on my long road to ultra by saying that despite the pain, discomfort and challenges along the way, I wouldn't have it any other way right now. Sure, I'd rather not have the injuries, but I am where i am and that is much further forward than 99 posts ago! For anyone who hasn't been to Edinburgh, you can check out our cheeky training run here:
Thanks for reading...
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