Pain

I had a slightly depressing weekend. This was unexpected - I've been having a very (too?) enjoyable time of late, with plenty of seasonal over-indulgence. Most of what I got up to in the last couple of days has been very enjoyable - I saw the fascinating Pitmen Painters at the National with my mum and brother, drinks on Saturday with Smithy, Lotte, Rick and a heavily pregnant Andi (now a mum) and went up to Bedford on Sunday to see my sister and her family, which was great apart from the attempted poisoning...

The problem was my run on Saturday. Within moments of finishingthe 8 miles, I knew that my peroneal tendon problem had come back - this was the foot pain that kept me from running for 5 weeks after the Marathon du Médoc in September. I am cutting it very fine with my training already, what with that original injury coupled with my 'flu/pneumonia, and the thought of more time out makes me wonder whether I'll make it to Morocco at all at this rate. Only three months to go.

I had a sudden epiphany whilst jogging to the gym this evening though. Incidentally, all non-geeks can stop reading now. Anyway - I have been trying to modify my running style for a while now, focusing on avoiding a heavy heel strike (which is inefficient and I suspect contributed to my patellar tendinopathy a while back) and trying to land with more of a midfoot strike. I think that this, however, puts more strain on my peroneal tendon and 5th metatarsal, hence my new foot problem. It's a relief to have a working theory as to why this is happening and what to do about it. The difficulty now is to balance avoiding more peroneal tendon problems with avoiding more patellar tendon problems. Some might say this is a sign that I shouldn't run the MdS. I say "bah" to them - for now - though I did check the cut-off dates for refunds if I do pull out of the race.

Incidentally, on the off-chance that anyone has read this far and hasn't died of boredom yet, there's an excellent review of running technique on the blog The Science of Sport here.