The trouble with enthusiasm...

...is it can get you into trouble!

Oh what a fool I am. The week following the Tough Ten Challenge, I was so full of enthusiasm that I pushed on hard trying to claw-back my mileage total for the week .

I seem to be at the point where my muscles are able to accept plenty of training volume, but my tendons are not. Smashing down rough, rocky descents in the Tough Ten Challenge, followed by too much road mileage training resulted in another tendon inflammation (tendonitis), this time - the knee (hence the picture).

The main symptom of the injury was a stabbing pain in the knee when attempting to run up any sort of incline. So, again there wasn't much to do but RICE (Rest Ice Compression Elevation) and add some leg strengthening exercises.

On the positive side (sort of), my knee injury coincided with a head-cold, caught from my darling wife. So, dodgy knee and snotty nose - not great!

After a week's rest, with the exception of doing some gym work, I managed to get out for a 17 mile slow run on Sunday. This started badly with a few bouts of the stabbing pain, but after about 10 minutes or so the pain pretty much disappeared. And since this run, my knee swelled very slightly but now seems pretty much back to normal. But just to be sure I've kept it pretty low volume this week.

Looking forward, I need to re-focus on the ONER. And therefore I have decided:

1. To skip the Bath Half Marathon as it won't help me at all towards preparing for the ONER, and will just take time for me to recover
2. Add more leg-weights sessions, particularly leg press, as there is some evidence that these may help to protect my quads against all the hills that the ONER will present
3. Don't fall into the trap of just adding more and more mileage at the expense of other training
4. Listen to my body more to try not to get injured again

I have re-planned as follows:


Also, mad as it seems, I have taken to carrying a rolled-up piece of roofing lead in my work rucksack. I will soon be adding to this with a pair of 1Kg ankle weights. These impediments are to help me get general conditioning at every opportunity (free training!). Will these work? Only time will tell...