An update from the sidelines

As you may have guessed, there’s not much running going on in the Mainwaring household right now!

The “issue that hopefully wouldn’t impact my training too much” that I referred to in my last post became a rather large issue as it transpired! I ran the 5k (second amongst a throng of high school kids) on the Saturday and was sore afterwards, didn’t run Sunday then stubbornly insisted on running 11 miles on Memorial Day with Mike and Ben. The company was great but the run was horrible and this was where I really dug myself into a hole!

Since then I have run a little, spent time with Dr Duffy, swum a lot and last night received the most painful but hopefully beneficial massage and stretch of my life under the hands of my new Ukrainian friend Tim! Basically my entire left side is a mess of knots, adhesions, inflammations and what not. Pretty much my entire right side too, but not as manifestly bad as the left at this point! It appears that after years of pounding the roads and following that with sitting in my car and at a desk all day my body has finally had enough “right that’s it, you’re not doing much to look after me I’m going to have to give you some pain to stop you from running and do something about it!”

So the goal over the next few weeks and indeed going forward indefinitely is to get on top of these issues and make stretching, massage and strengthening a much more integral element of my training and lifestyle. Then maybe, just maybe, I can get back on track to run a solid marathon in Philly later this year and carry on running competitively as I get older!

I’ll keep you posted