Ok now its Jan 26th and quite a bit has happened since my last post. Back in August and September i continued with my training in preparation for the Valley Harvest Marathon. At the time, I felt that i was doing all the right things. Looking back now, I was woefully unprepared for my next marathon. I was running all of my long runs very early on Sunday mornings, to avoid the heat. Big mistake #1. I was ignoring an annoying pain in my right knee. Big mistake #2. I was also overconfident from already finishing a marathon in May, Big Mistake #3. These would come back to haunt me.
So I signed up for the Valley Harvest Marathon about a week before the thanksgiving weekend that it was to be run. I was hoping for cool weather and had trained assuming that that's what i was going to run in. WRONG! Instead of being a perfect temp of around 10-12C, the thermostat hit 26C that day.
Everything started off fine at 9am, the temperature already at 17C. 5k down, everything still fine. 10k, still cruising, 15k getting hotter and somewhat uncomfortable. by 19k i was switching sides of the road to find shade wherever i could. all the while, my right knee is talking to me, a little louder with each passing km. by the time i made it to the halfway point, just before Kingsport, my knee was screaming for me to stop. I took 2 vitamin I's but no joy. My run had turned into some kind of freakish hobble. by the time i reached 24k, i was walking. This was going to be a long day.
I had texted Stacey, giving her status reports every couple of km but at 24k, all i could say was "i hurt, knee shot, walking" she continued to send texts to cheer me on but to no use. i could run for maybe 100 metres then walk for 5 or 10 minutes. I was so frustrated, pissed off and in so much pain that I was crying at around the 30k point. that was my wall. onward i hobbled/walked.
My most humiliating point was at a checkpoint around 32k or so. I remember arriving at a water station, there was an RCMP car sort of following me, probably making sure i was OK. One of the volunteers asks the constable "how many more are there after this one?" THIS ONE??? wtf am I? a cow? The constable replied with "there's 2 or 3 more after him." I felt like saying, "I'm right here you arseholes, could you have at least waited until i limped past before asking?" but i couldn't muster up the energy to say anything. Stacey started walking to meet me, which she did at around 38k and with her support, I managed to finish in a time of 5:22. I was humbled. After the Bluenose I had full intentions of finishing this one faster with less training.
A quick trip to a medical clinic confirmed that I had IT Band syndrome or "runners knee". It took over a month of no running at all before I could start again. In November, I hired a running coach to better prepare me for 2012. I also made several trips to physio in November and December to work on the strength and flexibility in my right leg (mostly hip). As of today, my training is going great, i'm feeling better than ever and well on my way to running the Bluenose again. I have a 20k run this Sunday, which puts me way ahead of my 2011 schedule. I am by no means looking past the Bluenose but I must run the Valley Harvest again just for revenge. For now, I'll keep trying to update this with my runs and health updates. Tonight I just finished a training run that was a 3k warmup (ran with Stacey), 6km at marathon pace (i went a little faster, just to push it a bit) and a 1k cooldown. felt great, pain free!!
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