7 Weeks Out
26th Feb. Running shoes on for the first time in a week. Still not 100% recovered from illness but good enough to do some easy work. Within the first 100m I felt the familiar discomfort above my pubic bone. No lower ab pain, but I knew if I continued it would return.
Damn.
I felt crushed. I was so sure that I would be ok that I hadn’t given any thought to what I would do if not.
Clearly this was Ostensis Pubis, caused by an instability or imbalance of my hips and adductors. I didn’t understand why. I’ve strength trained for years. I don’t have ‘instabilities’ or ‘weaknesses’. Regardless, the decision was made to drop from Manchester and rest for 8-9 weeks before slowly working my way back to running.
I don’t have time for this.
I’m not a 20 (or even 30) year old who can afford to take time off. I’ll be 44 this year. How long is my window to be able to run under 3 hours? Then I remembered;
I can’t think like this.
I felt sorry for myself for all of about 5 minutes and then returned to the drawing board. I began cross training the next day. I had an appointment with our physio, Claire, on Thursday, which I considered cancelling but didn’t.
This was a good move.
As Holly pointed out to Claire during our session, according to my bone scan I appear to have been grafted from Titanium.
“You’re not unstable, Pete, at least not physically. And you don’t have OP. You’ve got some thickness on your tendon that needs working out and then you’ll be fine to run again. Give it two days and then start back on your Marathon training.”
Just as a massive grin spread across my face, Claire dug her thumb into a tendon somewhere in my pubic region and caused a feeling of pain I’ve not come across before. Really, I’ve never known anything like it.
On Sunday March 3rd, I took to the streets for my second run in two weeks. Please let this be ok.
No pain. Thank God.
Marathon training is back on. Losing two weeks of training when you’re this close to racing isn’t great. I have 6 weeks until race day, which affords me 5 real weeks of training. Time is not, and never will be, on my side.