23 days – weak ankles, strong painkillers

It’s quite shocking when you train and look forward to something for so long and then to suddenly realise you only have 3 weeks until it’s going to happen. That basically equates to 2 weeks of training and, like every athlete before me thinks, I’m absolutely certain I haven’t done enough. To be honest, paradoxically, I think I might have been in a worse condition if I had trained more! The reason for this is with the injury problems I have had to rest between runs more than I would have wished, however, I think my body needs more recovery time than before – or at least that’s the way it feels. I think it’s partly age related but could be more to do with the stress of running with the pack every time which never feels any lighter and now weighs very close to it’s final weight of around 7 kilogrammes. So less training has forced me to think about quality rather than quantity – that’s the theory anyway.

I ran with Mike at the weekend by competing in the Kerno Orienteering event at Craddock Moor and ran 2 classes (brown and blue) which was fine, even though I incredulously managed to forget my trail shoes and had to run in trainers!! Fortunately the weather was good and the terrain was quite forgiving although I had to slow up for the last half an hour or so as I could already feel my feet starting to get hotspots which I was worried might turn into blisters. Not what I need at this stage in the training! I’m sure Mike will take every opportunity in the future to remind me about this little incident.

So, the heel has settled down and I’m pretty confident won’t cause any problems during the big weekend. The ongoing worry I have now is weak ankles. It seems every time I go on any longer runs I end up rolling one or both ankles at some point. Not only is this really frustrating but very painful! I have developed a good strapping technique which I think will stop any terminal ankle injuries and, fingers crossed, will save any smaller twists. I guess it’s really down to the terrain on the day – Welsh tussocks are well renowned for their ankle injury inducing powers – I’ll be lucky to get through both days without at least one scare.

Still on the positive side, I’m feeling fitter than I have done for ages, even before the European IRC – although that’s a bit unfair as they are 2 completely different sports and shouldn’t be compared. In fact I rowed for 10 minutes yesterday and was shocked at how difficult it was to stay under 2min/500 pace!! Remembering not too long ago being able to keep that pace up for almost 3hrs – yes, 3 hrs!

Anyway, off to bed to get some kip. Wish I could get more but there’s always too much to do and not enough time to do it. Always the way.