Week 8 - Dealing with my first injury...

This has been a tough week. I woke up on Monday with all sorts of aches and pains - a bad headache, stiff all over, bunged up and fluey and worse of all, a pain on my left shin. I had taken a bath on the Sunday night and I think that helped but I still had all sorts of issues. And it wasn't me being a hypochondriac!

First priority was to shake the cold. I drank lots of water and had a series of early nights... that helped a lot, I guess it just had to work its way out of my system. The most worrying thing at the start of the week was the sore shin. I was scared about shin splints and so I tried to take it handy. It was still sore on Wednesday morning and I bought some deep heat and a deep heat pad to apply on it. It made all the difference.

By Friday, I was feeling a lot better and was ready to run. I felt guilty for not having run all week. I know it was a good achievement of having completed the Sussex Beacon but that was just one step on the way towards training for the Flora London. It meant I fell behind my training schedule as well, which the book doesn't really address. So despite the frustrations of not having trained, I am grateful that I had recovered from my cold and also that my leg feels a lot better.

Feeling better on Saturday morning, I got back into the groove and went for a run. I ran just under seven miles around Clapham, which I marked out on gmap pedometer. My legs felt fine and I was happy to be running again. I ran around the Common a few times. It was the first time I had run on the Common and I enjoyed it a lot. Loads of other runners out too. Everyone starting to get focussed on the Marathon, I'll bet! Good stuff. Looking forward to running more again in Week 9....