from Diary of a rubbish marathon runner I’ve failed to mention something in my few recent posts. About 10 days ago I started to develop a pain near the outside ankle of my right leg, about an inch above and towards the front of the leg. Even though I can feel it pretty much all the time, it doesn’t bother me during the day. However, it can become rather painful at times when running, especially downhill. From looking at pictures of the foot on the web it could be the anterior inferior tibiofibular ligament, but that’s just my own wild guess. And anyway, knowing the name of the part in itself doesn’t really help in treatment. My ice pack is in Kerry, and I don’t believe in painkillers, so at the moment I’m not doing much at all about it. It has gone past the stage where I can just ignore it, but has not quite reached the bit where I admit defeat and start resting yet. When Niamh asked the other day how my run was, my answer of “my foot hurts like hell but the rest of me feels great” I was only half-joking.
So far I’ve been able to keep pretty much to the schedule, even though I’ve muddled up the days of the workout a bit. It’s great to be able to sleep in until 6:30, run 18 miles and still be home for breakfast before the other adults are awake. Well, it didn’t quite work out like that this morning, Maia must have woken as I was leaving, and Niamh wasn’t too impressed by the early start. I ran from Stillorgan to Killiney, up the hill and down the other side. Since that didn’t deliver the required mileage I ran to Cabinteely Park on my way home and started churning out 4 loops on that. With my sore foot I was getting slower and slower until I spotted another runner ahead of me on the third loop. My competitive juices got stirred and I dropped the pace from 8:50 to 7:20 until I caught up. Unfortunately I went back into jogging mode on the way back home.
It was rather cold this morning, the fields were covered in a thick layer of frost which made it easy to imagine running through a winter wonderland. Unfortunately at times the path was covered in ice as well, which made for very uneasy footing and was partially responsible for the pedestrian pace today. At one stage I actually slipped but somehow managed to execute a perfect rolling landing and didn’t get hurt. That could have ended a lot worse.
There is not much else to say at the moment. We’re going to head for home tomorrow and I’ll take it easy for two days, running wise; not just because of my hurt foot (I refuse to call it an injury) but also because there is a 10k on New Year’s Day, and I’ll give that a go. I don’t know if I will be able to run properly with that ankle, but I’ll find out. If it’s too bad I’m going to miss the 10-mile race in Mallow for the fourth year in a row.
28 Dec
10 miles, 1:19:23, 7:56 pace, HR 152
29 Dec
18 miles, 2:34:41, 8:35 pace, HR 144
Weekly mileage: 89+ miles
