New Job, New Run, New Injury
It has been a bit of a mad four weeks! This past month I have started a new job in Windsor on a utility company’s graduate scheme, been commuting 90minutes to work every day whilst me and five other look for a house in London big enough and cheap enough to fit six young professionals who still think they are students (I wish), and I have had one running injury clear up whilst another has appeared.
As a result the running has been taking a bit of a hit, as by the time I get home every evening it might as well be midnight it is so dark and I am yet to join a gym in the area so cant even use a treadmill. Incidentally why it is so hard to find a gym with a pool for under £50 a month?! Anyway, the runs that I have managed to squeeze in have mainly been stumbles around the countryside of Basingstoke (where I am temporarily living), or quick dashes around the canals of Birmingham at weekends.
One of the best runs over the four weeks was a five mile circular jog around the village of Mapleldurwell in Hampshire where there were more deer to navigate past than dogs – something that makes a change from the usual suburban running that I do.
This weekend was the weekend of the10k run in my local village of Kinver (near Birmingham). It was an awesome day not only because half the village turned out to cheer all the runners on, but it was also Sophie’s first ever competitive race. Not only did she manage to beat her target time of one hour by a whole seven minutes, but she even complained after the race that she didn’t even try very hard and could have run a lot faster. At this rate she is probably going to end up faster than me even though she has only been running for a year. It’s just not fair! I spent the run taking photos of all the runners as they crossed the finish line as no one was taking official race photos and thoroughly enjoyed the morning even though I wasn’t taking part. It was great to see lots of runners from Stourbridge RC (my old running club) entering the race and someone I ran with lots last year managed to take second place after only narrowly missing out on first.
The Gang!
The old hip tendonitis injury is virtually gone now and the only time I feel any tenderness is when I try and run without an adequate warm up or jump on a bike. Instead I now have a really strange injury where part of my quad (the tear drop looking muscle on the inner part of the leg by the knee) is incredibly tight and painful a few days after I run or swim. The tightness is made worse by all that clutch control on the way down the motorways to work every day and no amount of massage or stretching seems to loosen it off. After hoping that it would wear off over the past few weeks I have admitted defeat and booked an appointment at a physiotherapist in Windsor next week.
The plan for the rest of this week is to head out on a long slow run around the Basingstoke countryside followed by lots of stretching to see if that will loosen off my knee a bit. If that doesn’t work then its all down to the pysio on Tuesday to sort things out! Fingers crossed.
