I’m very annoyed at the moment. I had a twinge in my knee last week during my long run and cut it short to 17.5 miles. I rested it most of the week with just a 2.5 miles run on Wednesday and then had a 19m run planned today. I started out, everything felt fine, then about 2 miles into the run I felt the knee playing up again. I decided to cary on for another half mile and see if it went away (kind of knowing that it wouldn’t but you never know…) but obviously it didn’t subside, so I took a road off my planned route and came back on myself.

In the end I did just over 10km which was far short of the 19m that I had planned…..

Positives:
I was able to get home in time and watch the London Marathon, plus I gained a few hours extra in the day that would have been spent out running!

Negative:
This is the high mileage month befor my taper and I haven’t managed to complete any of the long runs as anticipated yet which doesn’t bode well. My other half has suggested that I get a sports massage, and he’s going to speak to one of his work colleagues tomorrow (who also runs) to find out where he get’s his so that I can get this done and hopefully be in full fitness ready for the real race!

I have 5 weeks to go until the Edinburgh marathon and todays’ long run was supposed to be 19 miles. It all started off well, the first three miles were with Max the dog, but then I left him at home (the main reason being because he’s been dragging his heels recently when I’ve been out running so thought 19m might be too much for him!).

I could really feel the difference running without him, the last time I ran without him was for the Wilmslow half marathon – it just seems easlier because I am not holding his lead to one side, slightly altering my gait.

Everything was going really well, however at about 8.5 miles I felt a twinge in my left thigh and around 10 miles I had to slow down to give it a break. I walked for a couple of minutes and then ran again for another mile or so but realised that I couldn’t continue at the same pace. Obviously, as is always the case with these things, at this point I was pretty much at the furthest distance from home so I couldn’t even cut the run short! I managed for the next couple of miles a run/walk combination but to be honest I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up. For the last 4/5 miles I relinquished to the inevitable an did more running than walking, with the running being more ocassional and the walking being at a reasonable pace.

I managed to run/walk 17.5 miles in the end and in just over 3 hours 10 mins – despite being annoyed that I hadn’t been able to complete the full distance and the fact that I had pulled a muscle or something, I found some solace in fact that I had targeted myself to run the 19 miles in the same time, therefore overall I was only 1.5 miles short of my original target for the same period of time – which, all in all, gave me some hope for the marathon.

Next week, I think my plan has been running 22 miles, but I think that I will hedge my bets and aim to run 19 miles and then 22 miles, the week after that.

I have run exactly 300 miles in my existing trainers which are Mizuno Wave Nirvana 4′s bought a couple of years ago. I’m starting to feel the wear in them now, it’s not so bad on shorter runs but since I started training for the marathon my long runs are quite long and I’ve started to get blisters on the sole of my feet on the inside.

I really like the fit and feel of the Mizuno’s and looked at getting another pair – only I could only find the same model at well over £100… so I did some searching and managed to find a review about a pair of Mizuno Wave Inspire’s – the reviewer specifically mentioned that they used to get blisters on the inside of their sole and hadn’t had this problem with these trainers, so I figured that was good enough for me and ordered a pair.

They arrived today! Yippee. I don’t have a run planned for tonight but I do have one tomorrow. I will see how I go in them and then decide whether I should chance them in the Wilmslow half marathon on Sunday or not…

I remember a conversation that I had with an old colleague some time ago (as a bit of background, he is a very dedicated athletic who is trying his best to get an Olympic place in London 2012) as he was monitoring the food that he ate as tried to reduce his body fat to improve his performance. He said that he was surprised at just how much fat that he actually ate even though he thought that he had a healthy diet – obviously so being the athlete that he was.

Over the last few days I would now have to agree with him, if you break my food intake down into protein, fat and carbs, about 25% is through fat – this astonishes me, as I, like my old colleague, thought I ate reasonably healthily….

Fortunately as I have been keeping a food diary I can establish where the fat intake actually comes from so that I can plan to reduce what is sensible to reduce. It would appear that I should be consuming just under 50g of fat daily and 10g of that is coming from my breakfast which really surprises me as 4g is from my semi-skimmed milk but an even higher 6g comes from my HEALTHY muesli!

I think that I am going to start buying proper skimmed milk for my breakfasts (that’s going to mean 3 different types of milk in the fridge now as my little girl is still on the full-fat blue top) and review my breakfast cereal to see if I can improve on the fat content.

A further 6.5g of fat comes from my salad dressing (extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar), now I’m not sure if there is an alternative to this as I love this dressing on my salad but I’ll have a look around and see what’s out there….

Generally the rest of the fat tends to come from vegetable oil used when cooking dinner and the spread used on my sandwiches at lunch. As I want to look for alternatives to sandwiches (not everyday though as they are convenient) my consumption may improve but I was thinking of houmus and pitta bread and there is still fat in that so I’ll have to have a bigger think…

Using My Daily Plate to keep an eye on the calories that I consume (and expend) is actually a real eye opener. It have calculated that I need to consume around 1,400 calories a a day in order to lose a lb a week. Based on everything that I have eaten so far today (and knowing what I will be eating for dinner tonight) I will consume 1,600 calories today – this means that I’m way over on my intake so have had to look into their database to see what exercise I can do (and realistically will do) in order to meet the deficit.

Fortunately I had planned to do some cleaning tonight and change the bedding so this should eat up (no pun intended!) around 90 calories, and then I will also be getting hte shopping delivered so will need to do the carrying and putting away, probably another 40 calories. I also started off the mixed fruit last night so I can bake a teabread tonight – soaking the fruit in some tea overnight – apparently baking uses up around 50 calories for 20 mins work.

This leaves me with 20 calories that I need to burnoff, but obviously I need to plan to burn more since this is all probable calorie burn! I have the top that I am knitting for my mum (which was going to be for her birthday but since that’s two weeks away now and I have barely knitted 2 inches that’s just not going to happen so it has now been moved to her Christmas present!) so I thought I could spend some time on that – aparently knitting burns around 80 calories an hour so it will be time well spent on both counts

If I had made an actual list of 100 things to do before I die then “running a marathon” would be up there near the top of the list – in fact it is one of the few things that I know that I have always wanted to do ….  So last year I decided to stop messing around hoping that someday I would achieve this particular goal and actually set about to attempt it.

First I set about training for my local half marathon, I did 10 weeks training for it will my longest run at 12.5 miles (it was only supposed to be 10 miles but I took a wrong turn and got lost!) and then found out that I needed to have an operation that meant I was unable to take part in the marathon as I needed 4 weeks rest with no exercise – I was specifically told that I WOULD NOT be taking part in the half   I was completed gutted that I couldn’t do the half, especially after all the training that I had done but after a couple of months wallowing (is that how it is spelt?) I decided that I needed to get back onto the wagon. 

I searched around for an appropriate marathon but couldn’t really find one locally, but then spotted that the Edinbugh one was quite flat and in May which left loads of time to get into shape… I registered immediately before I could change my mind and then proceeded to tell everyone about it so that I couldn’t back out either, so now for the hard work – let the training commence…..

In order to monitor my own training I have set up a separate blog to log my training Vics Marathon

Question: How long should intervals be?

Answer: Generally the ratio of

time spent on the repetition: time spent on the rest interval

depends on what you want to develop (stamina or speed). The length of the rest interval largely dictates the intensity of the repetition, so by altering the length of the rest interval you can adjust a workout to developing either stamina or speed.

Therefore a shorter rest interval (one part repetition to one part interval) develops stamina, or aerobic power. The short rest interval doesn’t allow enough time to remove all of the lactic acid that builds up during the training session, so as you begin each repetition you will already be a fatigued state, and these sessions will develop stamina.

A longer rest interval (one part repetition to three parts interval) is good if you want to do very intense (fast) repetitions in order to build your speed. The longer rest interval allows more time to recover and therfore allows you to put more intensity (speed) into each repetition.

Realistic you need a mixture of the two. For developing stamina for distance running, shorter rest intervals are ideal. However for shorter distances, or that final kick to the finish line in a long distance race speed is important, so longer rest intervals with intense (faster) reps are ideal.

Training official starts today for my half marathon in October. My first run was some interval training..

Log:

• Distance – 4.18 miles
• Time – 38 min 40 secs
• Pace – 9:15
• Heart Rate – 181 avg (96%), 197 max

Splits for the distance:

1. 9:43
2. 9:02
3. 9:12
4. 9:12

Comments:

I ran with my leg taped up today and it felt loads better. The intervals were quite tough near the end and I gave up on the last repeat – I didn’t realise it was the last one and thought I still had one more to do, if I had have known it was the last one I would have pushed myself a bit more, but thinking that I still had more to do, I felt that I needed to keep something in the tank!

Recorded the mileage in two parts since once I completed the original workout then it didn’t record any more but I still had about half a mile to go before I got back to the Mill, so I set the timer off again.

I’ve been doing a bit of research on knees to see if I can establish what is wrong with my left one which is causing me so much grief at the moment. I am due to start my training programme on Tuesday for the half marathon that I will be doing in October, so inevitably, I want to do whatever is necessary to try and get my knee right for next week – therefore I want to know what is wrong with it so that I can attempt to treat it in the correct way.

At the moment, I am trying to keep off it as much as possible; I don’t plan to go running for the next few days but I would like to go out on Sunday if it feels better. One way or the other, I will be giving it 2-4 days rest depending how it feels on Sunday.

I’m pretty sure that it is nothing serious, but I don’t think that it is an overuse injury. There is no swelling at all, but it is very tender on the inside and to the bottom of my knee. It is even worse after sitting for any length of time – which is a bind since I work at a desk all day long! So with the research that I have done at the moment I am leaning towards Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome. I’ve listed below a few resources on this which detail the problem and how to treat it.

• Family Doctor
• Physio Room
• Sports Injury Clinic
• Return to Fitness

In general it looks like I need to rest it (which is something that I’m already doing), take ibuprofen (already doing), ice it and get a knee support.  So I’m already doing 2 out of 4 which isn’t bad.  I just need to ice my knee now and get myself a knee support, which I suppose is something that I should have in reserve anyway in case of future problems.

Also I need to improve my quadriceps muscles, and my glutes (bum muscles).  Oddly enough I was talking with a colleague earlier today and they mentioned that spinning classes were a good way of strengthening quadriceps and glutes so maybe I should look into this!

My Garmin has finally arrived – actually it arrived on Monday and I went out with it then for a couple of miles but I haven’t updated Mondays log yet (will get to it at some point!)

Hopefully the link below will show my data so I don’t have to re-copy it in here but we shall see… if not, here are the details anyway:

Log:

• Distance – 2.19 miles
• Time – 19 min 54 secs
• Pace – 9:15
• Heart Rate – 178 avg (93%), 188 max

Splits for the distance:

1. 9:16
2. 9:13
3. 1:24

Comments:

My knee has been playing me up for the last week; it’s been fine when I run but afterwards it just feels tender. Today it felt bad whilst I was running so instead of doing the full Kerridge run that I had planned (about 3 miles but not measured properly) I ended up cutting it short and coming back via the canal. Knee still feels really tender and I really want to just rest it up, but since I’m at work, I can’t really have my legs up on the desk!