Running update, life update!

It's been a long time, and I've been busy with my other life! Which you can read all about on my other blog, if you're interested. It's been an emotional time and I've found it quite draining, but it a good way.

My college course is going well - I've done fine in my assessments so far, but it really is continuous assessment, with a tests or a piece of work due every week. I'm sure continuous assessment was a lot more intermittent when I was at university!

I've survived what I think was my first ever practial assessment, unless you consider having to cover a book for my Brownie booklover badge in about 1980 to be a practical assessment. I found this much more difficult than studying and swotting to sit an exam, and to be honest I didn't really get to grips with what I was supposed to be doing before I went in. It's a bit alien to my head, to have to perform something correctly under scrutiny, and I hadn't really got to grips with the fact that this is what a practical assessment is all about. I passed, but I learned a lot about what I have to improve on too!

My running has been a bit of a disappointment too. Before the competition, I found myself running at a very, very silly time in the morning (okay, 0345!) so that I could fit one in before flying to London for a rehearsal! So it wasn't a lack of motivation! But I think the competition really took it out of me, emotionally and spiritually, and I got a bit out of my schedule and haven't really scrunised my performance in my last few runs.

Then a week ago, I got a niggle in my knee at the end of a 40-minute tempo run. I was nearly home, considering slowing down, when I got a sharp pain going through my right knee, which didn't pass. I've never had any knee problems, but I bet I'm not the only runner who lives in fear of them! I went straight home for R.I.C.E. and funny looks from the kids, and ran again on the Saturday, 12.5M with no problems. But in my easy recovery run the next day, I changed direction slightly - again, right at the end of my run - and it niggled again. It isn't agony, but I'm paranoid about it. I've taken four days off so far - although it feels like about a fortnight!! - and it still niggles a little bit. I've foam-rollered and cross-trained. Part of me doesn't want to know what's wrong with it in case it's serious, so I'm just sitting nicely with good posture and hoping it will mend.

In fact I'm hoping it will mend by Saturday! I've entered the Dunbar 10M Doon Hill Race, which I've completed in 2010 and 2011, and starts at 11am on Saturday. I found this picture of my slogging it from last year! It's a brilliant race - aah, selective memory is great, isn't it?! The course has lots of steady hills, which somehow I quite enjoy as I'm pretty good at keeping a steady pace through the gradients. The first time I did the race, the steward directed me into a big field, empty but for cow-pats, saying "up to the top, round the cairn and along the ridge!". I had no idea what a cairn was, but I know what a ridge is, and man, that ridge was really high up! The view, of course, was splendid!

It's a small race with a fast field (fast by my standards, I'm sure I was in last place for quite a stretch last year!) and truly amazing hospitality at the end with soup and cakes. It's the sort of club race won by ridiculously healthy-looking young men (like the ones on my college course!) where women a few years older than me look utterly shocked when they're awarded a prize for being best in their catagory. I aspire to that one day! I'm confident my knee will hold up for the up-hills but I expect I'll be slower on the down.

Race report soon!

Reassuringly un-injured.

So it's day 1 (rest day) of my biggest marathon training week. 40 miles in 5 days. Bring it on!

I went to the osteopath today. I have a recurrent problem with the alignment of my pelvis, not really helped by my dancing and my tendancy towards hypermobility in my pelvis. I am lucky enough to see an amazing osteopath, Lynne Bennet, who knows my body really well and never fails to make things right when I'm feeling out of sorts.

For about a fortnight I'd been having minor backache, especially when dancing, and especially in rehearsals. Rehearsals are different to real dancing because there's so much hanging around - it's not continuous movement, it's waiting to have things explained, waiting to make decisions, walking through stage patterns, then perhaps a minute of dancing, then some more waiting. It means often having to dance on cooled muscles.

I haven't been in agony but things haven't been right so I was off to Napiers this morning. Lynne laughed when I said I was marathon training. She looked at my back and said that of course, I will finish the marathon because I'm so determined (how nice to be seen that way!) but that I might suffer for it afterwards. She treated me and called it 'damage limitation'. Hmm. But she did say that I don't have an injury - it's just that my 'body is treating the alignment of my spine *as if* it's an injury'. Oh.

So, no injuries, come on then!!

The down side is that she gave me quite a lot of treatment. I left feeling quite light-headed and the day went downhill from there. I became unable to stop eating (aaaargh) and just wanted to go to bed!

I forced myself to go to pilates class, because missing 3 weeks of pilates over the Easter holidays was, I think, one of the reasons my back has been playing up. Sadly there was a substitute teacher and the class was much more rushed and harsh than usual. After 10 minutes I suddenly felt like crying, and spent the next 50 minutes with tears running down my face! And even though I was having a terrible time, I'm so thron that I wouldn't leave a class I'd paid for, and snivelled till the end!

And it was a freezing, rainy day.

It's 9pm and I'm going to bed right now. I know I'll do a brilliant 5 miles in the morning, with my no injury. It's already been decided.