One Week To go

One week to go until the 3rd race of the year and although the training is going well the Hamstring is getting tight and I'm spending more and more time sitting on the tennis ball at work.

The injury happended about 3 months ago in the Essex Road Relays, I was running in the B team and was running on the second leg, the lead man bought us in about 15th, and I set off with 2 people immediately in front of me. At the time(and probably still applicable now) I was very unfit, but the two in front of me were even slower and I managed to catch them within 200 yards, hold on whats going on here passing people feeling good, maybe the glory days are back after all.

Within the next quarter of a mile reality struck home as first some guy in a hideous bright yellow vest came past me, then some young girl in a pair of spray on shorts came past. Despite now feeling crap I still maintain a little bit of pride and did not want the girl getting away from me, so I set off in pursuit. Now the relay course is around contry lanes with lots of twists and turns and spray shorts started to get further away from me with every twist and turn and by the time I'd got to about 1.5 miles she was now 150 yards ahead and going away.

Now I was thinking tired, nobody to chase and nightmares of the whole field coming from behind to overtake me, but as we went around the next bend spray shorts appeared to be a bit nearer and not only that there were two people just ahead of her, if I could only speed up a bit I might catch one of them. Over the next 5 minutes I got gradually closer and as we came to the down hill section I was within 10 yards of three of them, it was then that my hamstring gave me a gentle reminder not to be so stupid as it decided to completly cramp up on me.

If it had been a staright race I would have stopped then, but being a relay I had to hobble on over the last mile, every twist and turn and up and down the kerb was agony, but surprisingly nobody had yet come past me and I was actually closing in on someone. The final part of the race was actually on the grass and there was someone from the club standing there shouting" go on you can have him, use your track speed" FUCK OFF track speed cant you see I'm on one leg and I have not stepped on a track for 10 years, but you can make it look as if you are trying so I pumped my arms a bit which only made me go even slower, until I almost fell over the line.

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Needless to say I was the slowest in the B team 23.34 for a course that I once ran 16.42 round, although I'm told its now a little bit longer.

A couple of days later it was back to physio for more buttock prodding and another set of exercises to start doing, why is it that as soon as you get home you completly forget the exercises that you have just been shown.

Since then it has been another very gradual build up starting off with only running a mile a day, but gradually increasin the miles, until I've reached 30 odd miles for the last 3 weeks including two hill sessions a week.

During last weeks hill session the hamstring started to tighten, I managed to finish the session, but am a bit concerned that it is going to go again in next sundays race.

Oh well thats it for now, I'll update you all after next sundays race, I hope to beat the 40.45 I ran last year.