I’m having the most manic morning so I’m hoping that anything I write here makes sense!  This has legit been the  longest week ever and it’s only Wednesday.  It’s not even midday on Wednesday yet!  I’m on a train enroute to rural Oxfordshire for work, so I’m grabbing the time to update y’all on my PRRRRRROGRESS and the run – yep run – I did today.  The good news is that having to go up to Oxford meant that I at least had breakfast at home, and since I took no photos today (it is MISERABLE out there) and yesterday’s photo isn’t very exciting, at least I could use a good photo for the image for this post!  Haha!

First, I should say that I am perfectly well aware that this blog is completely bipolar so far – I blame my hip/back/glute/foot for behaving in this manner haha.  Today’s blogpost – like the last three – is massively up though, so I’m sensing a positive trend here … knock on wood!

Rewinding to yesterday, I trained with George in Battersea and we were going to do 6x 800m track intervals, but it was pretty obvious in the warm-up that my foot was kinda stiff again.  I expected that anyway, because it was the same on Sunday and I thought it would loosen, but George wasn’t feeling well anyway (manflu) and was keen to do something other than run, so we decided to do some step-ups and mountain climbers, together with a bunch of core work instead.  It was a fun session – I enjoyed it but nothing massively exciting to report.  The real fun came later, because I remembered the other day that in a triathlon-induced spending spree a few years ago I’d bought a sports-massage cushion thing.  It basically heats up and kneads any misbehaving muscle pretty strongly, and I remembered it’d been brilliant when I’d had knee and hip issues a couple of years back so I dug it out of the cupboard yesterday morning and pootled it along to work with me.  After all the usual foam rolling and tennis-ball action I sat down at my desk, turned it on and BOOM it was working its magic on my back.  I think you’re meant to do it for like 20 minutes so I did it for three hours.  Of course.  And … although I now have bruises all over my back … my foot feels like a new foot!  I did some 80% 1 rep max deadlifting yesterday afternoon, together with a 30-minute amrap of body weight exercises (specifically, single leg deadlifts, slam-downs and sit-ups) so I definitely didn’t go especially easy on it, but after I’d finished up I still felt absolutely fine, not a tingle, a twitch or a stabbing pain in sight!  I thought I’d juuuuuust seeeee what a couple of jumps felt like and I set up the deck, got the camera out, braced myself, and knocked out FOUR WHOLE JUMPS!  I totally felt like I could do more, but I was keen not to push it (haha) so I left it there but I was so so happy!  Then it was straight back to work for a bit more massage-cushion action and then out for supper to celebrate.

On my way home I decided to do one more thing for my foot which I’d thought of during the day, which sounds – and made me look – totally weird.  So, I have this theory that since this damage is nervous, my back/foot/whatever is oversparking because it’s scared of various moves, and one of them is landing on my forefoot when I run.  I think this because it wasn’t great for the first km of my run on Sunday, but then it chilled out when it realised that nothing bad would happen when I landed on my fore-foot.  So I figured I could work with this and by walking with my foot falling in the same way as I run, i.e. landing mid-foot, then setting down and pushing off but without any impact.  It makes sense right?!  I did it for like 30 steps each side, then walked normally for a bit, then repeated until I got home (probably about 1km all up between walking to the tube, transferring between tubes and walking home).  Sure enough it was the same pattern as Sunday’s run – the first few steps each time were awkward and sore, and then it relaxed and became normal.  Each set that I did there were fewer weird steps and more normal steps so I kinda figured it was working?!  Even if I must’ve looked like a right tool prancing down the street.  But you gotta do what you gotta do!!

I was seriously worried that after deadlifting, the AMRAP and the jumps (as well as the morning’s workout) I might really struggle this morning.  I was also a bit worried that my foot would have decided that it didn’t like landing forefoot after all – I am totally making up this rehab lark as I go so everything I decide to do is a bit of a risk.  Anyway, I met George again and we set off round the track … and guess what?!  It was STILL LOOSE!  AND even MORE excitingly my gait was (at a guess) about 90% back to my NORMAL GAIT!  This is so exciting, mostly because it will mean that I should run an awful lot less risk of injury on the right which is one of the many things I’m really really scared of.  We did a 4.5km run, broken up like last week with body weight exercises every kilometre or so and even in the warm-up I was landing well, not limping, there was no weird shuffling and I felt absolutely bloody great!  Annoyingly I haven’t had time to get on the massage cushion again yet (although I’ve tennis balled it) and I got one of the last seats which, annoyingly, hasn’t got a plug.  I’m hoping that I’ll get some massage cushion loving on the train home (yep, I’m schlepping it around with me … although even I haven’t quite got the balls to whip it out in a client meeting and relax onto it, I feel like that might just cross the line of professionalism).

So there is the update for today, I’m so so happy about this!  I’m going to a seminar tonight at Profeet which was included in my Race to the Stones entry – oh yeah, I don’t think I mentioned I signed up for this as a training/interim ultra, it’s 100km over two days with a night camping in between in July, so I think it’s a perfect training run.  Anyway, point is, I’m going to a seminar tonight about preparing your feet for an ultra, so I’ll let you know how it goes!  I will be asking as many questions as I can (yup, I will be that person …!).

Have fantastic hump days and speak soon,

xx