*That's* better

Easy Tiger got to have a bit of a dig around my back on Monday. He started by telling me to forget the lie that massages hurt, and then proceeded to do everything in his power to reinforce the concept. Still, it can't have been too bad, 'cause I'm going back tomorrow :-0 :-)

His diagnosis is the kitchen dance didn't do the damage; it was probably just the straw that broke the Gnome's back. There's a whole bunch of things that are tighter than they should be, in particular a couple of muscles that run along my spine. He spent a gentle 3/4 of an hour "spreading them out" before turning to my legs. Tomorrow he gets to do it all again plus work over the rest of me. It's all good!

Tuesday morning I skipped the normal hills session and just did a gentle 8.5k. In fact, when I got up I couldn't bend to put my shoes on (every morning is the same) and I just about pulled the pin when I remembered 2P's exhortation that is written up on my whiteboard - "When you have exhausted all you can do, all that is left to do is NOT QUIT" - so out we went. (When I talked to Easy Tiger about the morning back stiffness, he just said to have a quick shower to warm it up before doing anything and that has worked well).

The first 3.5k were with tiger angel (gee, it's lovely to be running with her again!). As she's limited to 20 minutes at a time at the moment, she walked home at that point and I went on alone. I concentrated on running 'free' and gradually sped up so the middle 3 k were at 5:10, and the last 2 were at 4:40. Confidence goes up a notch, back feeling OK, but quads still hammered.


Wednesday is normally my mid-week longish-run-at-marathon-pace day, but seeing that I'm supposed to be starting into taper, I dropped it back to 12.5k. Averaged 5:10, felt comfortable, but quads still hurting (why??).

Thursday, and I wondered whether my quads would stand the 25k ride to work, but decided to give it a shot. As it turned out, I didn't feel my quads at all, but my back felt a bit stiff if I spent too long on the tri-bars (so I didn't :-)).

I was a bit late for Run Club, so I did my warm up and stretch while they were doing their drills. My back felt a little tight, and I was unsure of how it was going to go. The session was a hill sandwich - 2x hills, 2x 600 (flat), 2x 400, 2x 200 & back to the hills. I wasn't going to risk the hills, so I trotted out a 1k at 5:30 chatting to Trivia Dave (who was also avoiding the hills).

I haven't run any speed session for 7 weeks, so the first couple of intervals felt a bit flat. However, as I got into them it felt better and better (I love track!). I ended up doing
2:17 and 2:24 for the 600s,
1:27 both for the 400s &
0:38 and 0:37 for the 200
and I was feeling really good by the end.

Time beat us though. We couldn't do the closing hill intervals, so we did some additional strength work instead. Things like squats (oh my aching quads!!!).

I was intending to do a pool session on Saturday instead of my Saturday run, but I've just realised that it's the CR5k, and I ain't missing that. Sunday morning is my 'home' Striders run (starts just down the road from my house), so I can't miss that either. In deference to the taper, I'll just do the 20k option, and push the pool session back to Tuesday.

Just 17 days to go. Doesn't seem so long ago that it was 17 weeks. Can't wait... :-)

Gnome (believe it or not, in bubble wrap - I'm being very careful).