Wednesday, July 29, 2020

The problems with not paying attention...

We're still in a worldwide pandemic and I'm still running, although a lot less in the past 3 weeks.

Upto a few weeks back I've been doing between 30-40miles a week and while not improving on my speed I've kept things ticking along and I've been enjoying some new 10-11miles routes I started running because of less traffic on some local roads.

That was until about 3 weeks ago when I went out for a 13miles run, 2miles into the run I felt a niggle on my right knee area which I initially thought nothing of it and ran on, after all these things happen now and then.  

But by 4miles into the run it actually hurt me a little so I stopped and stretched a walked a little and again started running. The rest of the run was pretty uneventful and I finished fine.

An hour after I got home I was crippled, it hurt to walk and going up/down the stairs was a real challenging with me being unable to put any weight on my right knee! So I took it easy and did some cycling over the following days on and off to see if things would be better.

I've since had two sports physio appointments and it turns out that luckily I've not done myself any joint damage and instead my IT band had tightened up so much it was causing my knee to land differently which caused the pain.   I've had two sessions of dry needling and its worked wonders, this week I've managed about 6miles of running with no pain in the area and finally going upo/down stairs is painless once again!

This all could have been avoided if I had cut the 13mile run short and it shows the importance of listening to your body and the problems with not paying attention,

So this shows the first problem with not paying attention!

The second problem with not paying attention is when you sign up to races, due to the Covid19 pandemic of course countless races have been cancelled outright or postponed. 

I go to do the Midnight Marathon in January of this year but since then every race I had planned to sign up to or had actually signed up for has been cancelled for 2020 with the exception of the Tralee Marathon which moved from April to September 26th so I should be running that.

Unlike Tralee the Dublin marathon is a much bigger race so its been cancelled for 2020 and its in its place they've recently introduced the virtual race series which includes the Dublin Marathon which is taking place in October.

I signed up because the virtual aspect suits due to two reasons, one it gets another race done under my belt and the second reason I'll get to shortly.

Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to this either as I signed up to both the Marathon and Half-Marathon and only after did I realise that both had to be completed between October 24th-26th. So provided I have the time to do both it's going to be a busy weekend and the legs are going to be a little tired.

So two instances where I should have been paying more attention.

Although the races for 2020 have been almost all cancelled this has at least for me been a good thing, especially when it comes to the Dublin Marathon because we're due our first child at the start of November so heading off to Dublin likely wouldn't have gone down to well with Grace.

When I get out to run from November onwards should be a interesting challenge.....