Two weeks to go until the London Marathon

Posted April 9, 2018 in running  |  No Comments so far

With under two weeks to go, the countdown has begun to the London Marathon.

If you haven’t sponsored me yet, you can still do so over at Virgin Money Giving. And it might be worth knowing that my employer, Bloomberg, has a donation matching scheme, so whatever you donate, my company will pitch in to double it. The charity I’m fundraising for, Starlight, will use the funds to bring some magic into the lives of seriously and terminally ill children, so anything you contribute will make a difference.

If only I could say my training has gone smoothly. It started slowly due to injury, and has been interrupted by a few different problems along the way, as you can see here.

Weekly distance chart annotated with the various obstacles I faced along the way

The most recent snag came a couple of weeks ago while on a 20 mile run. After crossing beneath the M25 for the first time — a big moment for me, as I’d long dreamed of running far enough to get out of London and back — my left thigh started to feel a little strained. The feeling didn’t subside and soon afterwards, at around the 12 mile mark, it became painful enough that I had to stop running.

The situation looked bleak. I was on a canal towpath somewhere near Cheshunt unable to run, around 10 miles from home, and I’d made the error of leaving home with no phone or bank card. The walk back to Walthamstow would be at least three hours, and with my thigh feeling the way it did I wasn’t sure I could even manage it. I began to contemplate the possibility of hitchhiking or flat-out begging for train fare.

Then my luck changed: I began to notice that, as I walked along, my thigh muscle was feeling a bit better with each step. So I stopped, stretched for a bit, walked some more, and was eventually able to run again.

Eight miles later I was back home with the 20 miles complete, but that left thigh was really not happy. For the next couple of days it was hard to walk and very hard to go up and down stairs. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to run in the marathon as it felt so serious. I decided to just forget about running for a while, reasoning that as I’d done 20 miles I was psychologically ready for the marathon, and if it took two weeks to recover, so be it.

In the end the injury receded every day and eight days later I was able to run 5k in Windsor with no flare-ups. After some gradually longer runs I worked my way up to doing 14 miles this morning, and I have no plans to run any longer than than between now and marathon day, when I’ll be running 26.2 miles. I’m sure it’ll be a cinch!


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