Copenhagen on May 16th is looking increasingly like the American plan to hand over power to the Iraqis at the end of June. We all know it isn’t going to happen, but keep saying that it is.
Last Sunday (race day minus 2 weeks), I opened the back door and sort of oozed into the belated final 20 miler. The first four or five miles were OK. Not quite comfortable but tolerable. Then I started to feel that ache in my right calf again. If I ignored it perhaps it would go away, I reasoned. It got sharper instead, till I had to slow right down. I ran-walked for the next 4 miles or so, till even that seemed too risky. So I tramped for a further five forlorn miles, then rang M and asked to be picked up.
The pain never turned into a pulled muscle but I felt that it would if I’d carried on running. I could still feel it yesterday though today it’s drifted away again.
Where to from here? I’m going to have a couple of short runs this week to try to avoid losing any more fitness but I’m just going to have to play things by ear next week. We’re still going to Copenhagen whatever happens. The time is booked off, the plane tickets are paid for, the hotel reserved. It looks like the best I can do is aim to ‘get round’ the marathon, and I wanted something more than that. Is it really worth running 10 miles and walking the rest? Where’s the achievement in that?
I’m not going to beat myself up about this, but I can’t let myself off the hook either. This calf has caused trouble before, and perhaps it was a problem waiting to be rediscovered. But I doubt if the stop-go long run schedule has helped. I’ve missed weekend runs, then lengthened the next one sharply to try to catch up. This isn’t a good method of improving endurance.
Perhaps worse, I’ve still not managed to lose the weight I was going to, and perhaps this has proved too much of a strain on the old physiology.
