Heading closer to the Half Marathon big day and feeling more nervous. Really wanting to put in the extra mileage but actually hurting so much that I have been worried about running at all! It is now that I am fearing that I won’t make it. Worrying whether it is advisable to switch which trainers to wear – or have I left it too late. Whether to keep trying to cram in the miles or relax. Well this is when I heard about Tapering – which is to slow down and not do as many miles. Thing is people who taper usually are doing a lot more anyway. The Easter holidays also saw that I got a lot more rest. With a trip to Italy coming up the first week I pretty much allowed my boys to play computer games and eat chocolate. In fact I think the only exercise I got at all was at running club. This was a “fun” week – and they are always hard work! We ran up and down steps – this was easier going up than down and made me lengthen my stride so that I wasn’t using the same foot to land on each step each time. Then we ran a long downhill stretch and back up again, and finally up and down a shorter, steeper, hill. Each of the activities in short bursts switching with a partner. By this point the slight pain in my heel and knee from running 12 miles amplified.
As I say at the end of the week we headed off to Italy. The campsite had some lovely hills – including a big long one and a short steep one to get to our caravan – so was all good practice. I would run up them alone – or the boys would decide to race up them (not that I stood a chance, especially against my teen!). Plus I went swimming and now that the children are older (and can swim better) it allowed me to leave them with my husband and swim lengths! As well as swimming away from the children in a game of shark tag! As you can imagine there was quite a bit of food consumed and even some alcohol. Over the next week we did a lot of walking and each time I hit around 20,000 steps my left heel and leg really hurt. Again I went swimming another couple of times and even did a class on the Idrobikes (aqua spinning) which was good fun and not hard at all!
I was pleased to see that when I got home that the scales were being kind and saying I was still the same weight (surprising because of the amount of gelato I had eaten). I have switched back to wearing my Barefoot trainers since reading the book Born to Run in the hope that the pain will subside. I am nervous now as to the running and want to practice more but my husband says I should rest. We have a 5k race the week before the half and I have a sports massage booked in between the two.
Very well done to all who ran the London Marathon 2017. It was amazing to just follow and I hope to get to a standard to do it too!
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