Good news from the physio

After completely resting my Achilles for a week I visited my physiotherapist at the Crystal Palace Sports Injury Clinic at the athletics stadium. I have to say that I was a little bit worried about what they were going to say but my injury had healed well over the 7 days and I felt a lot more cheerful about the up coming marathon.

The physio listened to what I did in training before first looking at my shoes. He took one look at my feet and told me that my shoes weren't giving me enough support. This suprised me as I had always thought I was was a mild over-pronator but it seems that I turn more as I ran than I've always thought. This was one possible contributor to my injury.

The next thing the physio did was have a really good feel of my calf muscles. His assessment was immediate, they were incredibly tight but considering the amount of running I have been doing this was not surprising. He recommended some deep (and quite uncomfortable) tissue massage and a series of stretches designed to target the range of different muscles in the lower leg.

The tightness of the muscles combined with inadequate stretching before and after exercise and wearing running shoes that don't provide enough support all contributed to my Achilles tendinitis. the fact that I was increasing my mileage to around 20 miles for my LSDR simply provided the final straw.

So, what about the recovery? Well the massage and the stretching exercises are pretty straight forward. As there are only three weeks until the race, there isn't enough time to do another long run which is in fact a blessing in disguise as long runs are completely out of the question. I've been told to keep my running light, do some low impact exercises (i.e, head to the gym and get on the cross trainer or get in the pool), do a lot of stretching and finally, acupuncture.

Acupuncture is something new to me. My physio suggested it as a way of relaxing specifically tight areas as well as encouraging the healing process. I've never had it before but actually found it quite a pleasant experience. A few minutes after the needles were inserted I experienced a warming sensation located along my Achilles and lower calf muscle. I was suprised as to how deep the needles went, a good couple of inches in some places.

More generally the injury has given me cause for reflection. I thought that the whole training program was going particularly well, in fact, even after the long run that led to the injury, I still felt happy with how I was doing. But even with this, my third marathon, eight half marathons under my belt with all the thousands of miles of associated training , I'm mildly suprised that I could have got everything so wrong. Perhaps I have been slightly over confident with this marathon, building up the mileage too far too quickly.

It just goes to show, that even with the experience , I can still make mistakes with my training, pushing myself too hard and eventually breaking down.

My Achilles heel actualy turns out to be my Achilles!

Only two weeks ago I was thinking to myself, "Wow, this training period has gone exceptionally well, the smoothest race build up I've ever had." Then the Sunday before last I came gown with some sort of bug, I slept poorly and had a slight temperature so I decided to skip my planned LSDR. The bug seemed to pass, but I wasn't willing to risk it so I didn't return to training for another two days just to make sure I was fit enough to do so.

The training week went well, a total of 38 miles including a steady 11 miler at just under my race pace and followed by a 22 mile LSDR on the Sunday. I finished my long run feeling very tired but slightly stiffer than usual, nether the less, I managed to run it comfortably at 9:30/mile. It was the following day when things started to go wrong.

I finished work early deciding to walk to the hospital where I was attending a course. As I walked along I felt a tightness in my left Achilles tendon. As I continued to walk the tightness tuned increasingly painful. I got through the afternoon and as soon as I got home I packed it in ice and took some ibruprofen. The most worrying thing about the pain is that in the area affected there was a horrible creaking sensation everytime I moved my foot. The next day the pain grew worse, to the point where I was having to apply an ice pack every couple of hours just to get through the day. A quick bit of online research led me to suspect that I had developed tendinitis. I booked an appointment with my doctor who confirmed my fears, it was acute Achilles tendinitis. I was was prescribed rest, ice, compression and elevation as well as some diclofenac ointment.

Picking up an injury at this stage in my training is every runners worst nightmare. An injury like this sustained towards the beginning of a training program, if treated correctly, shouldn't affect your condition on race day. However, losing two weeks of training with only five weeks to go is horrible. My problem is that I have never really suffered an injury. For me this is completely new territory.

The first thing I've done is made sure the injury is completely rested. This was my doctors advice and so I've taken two days off of work. The second thing I've done is for the first two days, applied an ice pack to the affected area for 20 minutes every two hours, this combined with the anti-inflammatory drugs has already had a dramatic impact, rapidly reducing the swelling around the tendon. My doctor has also put me touch with a physiotherapist at the National Athletics centre at Crystal Palace. I have made an appointment but I suspect that by the time I get seen, I will already have recovered sufficiently enough (or otherwise) to know whether I will be able to run the race.


Achilles Tendinitis is basically caused by too much exercise, what is termed as an overuse injury. There can be a number of different causes ranging from a sudden increase in either the volume or speed of training, through to weak calf muscles. One of the reasons I'm so disappointed with being injured is that I thought my build up was going smoothly. You might think the 22 mile run was the cause of the injury but I'm not so sure, I have been building up to that distance for four months without any problems. I suspect that the virus I came down with the previous weekend might have had some influence on the condition of my muscles. Anyway, I shan't really find out until I speak to my physio.

For the time being I'm concentrating on rest coupled with some gentle stretching and light walking. Running is, at the moment, completely out of the question.

And... rest.

Today is a rest day, that means no exercising and as little activity as possible. There may be many people out there unkind enough to suggest that I should be an expert at this already but for us marathon runners, rest days are as important and the most intensive training sessions.

The whole point of training is to place a certain amount of stress on your body, the body then reacts to that stress by developing muscle in order to cope with the additional activity. One of the greatest misconceptions about running is that in order to become a good runner you have to go out and run every day. Not only is this not true it's also incredibly bad for you.

All sport place different kinds of stress on your body, the long distance runner's body has to cope with a repetitive pounding of what is almost three times their body weight hitting the ground over-and-over again for hours on end. Over the past three days I have run about 22 miles with yesterdays Kenyan hill session being particularly strenuous so today is a perfect day to give my body time to recover.

From a technical point of view rest (some people call them recovery) days enable the muscles, tendons and joints time to deal with the physical stress of training and in doing so, enable the runner to cope with a progressively intensive level of training activity. Rest days are therefore massively important in avoiding injury, if you were to run constantly for weeks on end if would only be a matter of time before your body would break down and that kind of break down can be disastrous.

So there you have it, one of the best ways to prepare for a marathon is to sit around and absolutely nothing for a day. It's a good idea to plan for a rest day, treat the rest day as part of your training. The best day to have a rest day is after one of your most intensive training sessions like a hard interval or a hill training day. Plan to have your rest day on a day when you are likely to be doing less than you usually do, i.e, don't have a rest day when you have to go to work.

Hill training

My training week is broken down into three core sessions, a long run at the weekend, a decent mixed paced (either a Fartlek, interval or threshold) run and a long hill session. Today I ran one of the long hill or Kenyan hill sessions which comprised of quite simply running up and down a fairly challenging hill four times. My local hill is One Tree Hill which is close to Honor Oak Park train station, a climb which I have become quite familiar with as it's part of he route I take to get to Peckham Common where I do quite a lot of my running at present. I run up one side, down the other to East Dulwich Road where I turn around and repeat the process. The route is about one and a half miles long so after a few reps the miles start to stack up.

So what's the point? What advantage is there to putting my legs through this kind of self inflicted torture? Well I first read about Kenyan Hill sessions in an article in Runners World magazine just before I started training for the 2006 London Marathon. Having struggled around the Cologne Marathon I was determined to finish the London race with a little more style than the exhausted heap I ended up with in Germany. Reading the article the writer had spent some time in Kenya training with the National athletics team where one day they went out for a hill training session. Our journalist had been used to hill training sessions that comprised of short, fast runs up hills so off he set, pounding his way to the top only to discover that the whole Kenyan national Marathon team wasn't even half way up the hill. The Kenyans were jogging at a steady pace as he passed them on the way back down and by the time he's turned around he had caught up with them again they had only just reached the summit. The Journalist managed a couple more reps before his knees started to ache but the Kenyans went on, maintaining a steady pace, jogging to the top and then recovering on the way down for another four hours. FOUR HOURS!

Kenyan Hill sessions are designed to help build deep muscle strength, the kind of muscle you need late on in a marathon post about 20 miles when all your glycogen reserves have been used up and you're really staring to hurt. There are many advantages to this kind of training for example:

• Developing your aerobic capacity; your body learns to use oxygen more efficiently over longer distances.
• Increased stamina, enabling you to run longer and further.
• Improved running action (biometrics), giving you a spring in your step than enables you to develop a longer stride length and reduced stress with ground impact.

Reading the article I was impressed. This sounded like just the kind of thing I needed to help boost my strength so off I went, looking for an appropriate hill. Fortunately, at that time I was living in Charlton, an area of South East London that is basically on a hill and just down the road from me was Shooters Hill one of the highest points in London. Actually, Shooters Hill is probably a bit too big for a Kenyan Hill session but I did it anyway, starting of with two climbs. I can still remember the way I felt after the first time I did it, I was in absolute agony!

There is another very good reason for doing these kind of training sessions and that's a psychological one. I can pretty much guarantee that the way you feel as you reach the summit on you 4th or 5th rep, your legs will feel not dissimilar to the way you'll feel at the end of a marathon. You will want to stop. This kind of mental preparation is invaluable, you might get it on some of your longer distance training runs but you get it every time on a Kenyan session.

New shoes

One of the great things about running as a sport is that it's a relatively cheap sport to pursue. The only real expense you'll encounter as a runner is the purchase of running shoes. This morning I've taken delivery of a new pair of Mizuno wave inspire 6, these cost me about 85 GBP. As far as I'm concerned they are worth every penny as over the years I've tried various brands and always found myself coming back to the Mizuno wave series.

As I have a pretty good idea about they kind of shoes I like to run in, I ordered my new pair on line but it's well worth going to a couple of specialist running shops to try out the new releases from various brands.

If you are a first time runner choosing running shoes can be a daunting, even intimidating experience. There are so many brands and types of shoe designed for different running styles and if you decide to do a bit of research you'll end up bombarding yourself with podiatrist technical jargon. The best thing to do is go to a running shop that has a treadmill an preferably does something called gait analysis. There are many shops in London that provide this service and if you're buying for the first time it's essential to have this done in order to have your running style assessed.


Once it's been worked out what kind of runner you are, you can decide of which shoe you want to buy. Personally I need a running shoe that provides some support so the runing shop should have a few brands of shoe taylored to my specific needs. A good salesman will offer you a selection of two or three shoes and let you try them out on a treadmill. This is important, if the sales assistant only offers you one type of shoe, don't buy them. Apart from the gait analysis the most important thing is comfort. You may be offered the perfect pair of shoes as far as the gait analysis is concerned but are they the most comfortable shoes? You can only find this out by trying a few different pairs before you buy.

Here are a few tips about buying shoes I've picked up:

• Buy Big! My actual shoe size is 10 UK but my running shoe size is 11.5. The reason for this is that your feet expand a you run, this is a particular problem for long distance runners. Your feet need room to grow as by the end of a marathon they'll be a whole shoe size bigger. As a guide you should have about a thumbs thickness of room between the tip of your toe and the end of the shoe.
  
• Shop around! Apart from anything else it's quite good fun to go around stores trying shoes and chatting to people about your running. Once you've determined which shoes are right for your check out the online price, you may save yourself a bit of money.
• Don't buy for brand or looks! You might think Adidas or Nike look cool but looking cool won't get you across the finish line. Go for comfort and type of shoe. If you don't know what type of shoe you need get some gait analysis.

Happy running!

Planning my training

One of the most daunting things confronting any marathon runner is planning a training schedule. Many first time marathoners have never used a structured training program so the prospect of putting together a plan of up to sixteen weeks detailing every aspect of your race build up is quite intimidating. As I plan my own build up to April the 25^th I thought I would share some techniques I use to help me plan my own training timetable.

Start from the back

Ok, so I’ve got between three and four months to plan for my marathon, so how do I do it? Well first of all there are some certainties that I can immediately factor into my build up working backwards from the most obvious one; that race day itself. I know that I will taper my program three weeks before race day, tapering is when I’ll be reducing the intensity of my training by half each week for the last three weeks. I also know that four weeks before my race will be the peak of my schedule when I plan to run my longest training runs. So before I get in to any detail I already have a basic idea about what I will be doing for the last four weeks.

Run a half marathon.

It’s a good idea to include a half marathon into your race build up. By the time I get half way through my schedule I know that I will be running about two hours or more on my long slow distance run and so effectively, by the time I get half way through my training I will be running the equivalent of a half marathon once a week, every week anyway.

The advantage of running a half marathon is that it also gives me an opportunity to practice my race pace, breaks up the monotony of the training and prepares me mentally for the bigger challenge of the full marathon.

Planning a weekly schedule

Now I get down to the nitty gritty, what to do on a day to day basis for the next four months. Over my training week I will be running three or four main training sessions and recovery runs interspersed with rest days. There are loads of different types of training run, some focus on developing strength others endurance while some build up specific muscle type required for different stages in the race. I will go into more detail about these types of runs at a later date but as a guide it’s always good to include some of the following sessions into my training week.

A long slow distance run (LSDR) is the key stone, the core around which I’ll build the rest of my training where I run for increasingly long periods of time, building it up week by week. For example, if I start off with a long slow distance run of about an hour and a half in January, each week I will add 10% onto the length of the run so week two will be 9 minutes longer. I continue to add 10% each week until I peak at week 12. The LSDR becomes incredibly time consuming, during my previous training I was regularly running over three hours peaking at three hours forty minutes. For this reason I usually did my LSDR over the weekend, usually on a Sunday.

Mixed pace running is something everybody can do. If fact, if you’ve never run a single step in earnest some sort of mixed pace run is the perfect place to start. Mixing up your running is a good idea apart from anything else it keeps it interesting. One type of run I enjoy is called a Fartlek, a Scandinavian word that translates a “speed play”. All I do with these runs is run different paces over a course of about six miles, running easy, steady and hard for various lengths of time.

As I am training for an endurance event one training session I swear by is Kenyan hills. I read about this type of run in runners world magazine years ago and I thought I’d try it as part of my build up to my last London marathon. Basically what I do is find a long fairly steep hill (I used Shooters Hill in South East London last time) and jog up to the top I then recover as I jog back down the hill. I then repeat the run three or four times increasing the number of repetitions weekly. Usual hill work involves running up a short hill at a quick pace and while those sessions are good for strength, running up a longer hill at a steady pace helps with that late race strength I’ll need post mile 20 in the race.

Be Flexible

Running to a schedule looks like a massive commitment and while the whole schedule can seem daunting it is important to remain flexible. I aim to achieve certain targets at different stages in the race build up. Ideally I’d like to run a total for around 25 miles a week to start off with. That distance is quite achievable for me but for others 18 or 20 miles may be a more realistic goal. When adding distance to my runs I always stick to the 10% rule, never adding more than 10% to my total run.

4 months 4 days and about 9 hours to go!

So the long training slog towards the London marathon has started and as you can see from the photo, sore legs and lack of fitness are not my only problems at the moment. Very cold weather has made some stretches of pavement quite slippery and this particular hill made for quite an interesting down hill section of my morning run. Some parts of the road were just sheet ice, I'd have been better off with skates than running shoes!

Apart from the slippery roads I quite like running in this weather, the air is crisp and feels clean and my regular easy route takes me through some lovely open park land in South East London. At about 7km long and with a fairly challenging hill, it's a good way to get the heart and lungs going.

Hopefully it will snow again before Christmas, running in the snow is slightly less slippery although people tend to throw snowballs at you!

Welcome to my blog!

Hello everybody and welcome to my Virgin London Marathon blog. Over the next four and a half months I will be training for the 2010 London Marathon. i will be updating my blog with all my training up until race day 25th of April.