West Highland Way Race 2020: 17 Weeks to Go

Training

If last week’s training was ten times better than expected, this week’s was nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

Let me explain.

Everything in the garden was rosy after last week’s 48-mile training extravaganza until that pesky right knee gave up the ghost while playing tennis with Zak seven days back.

Cue much hand-wringing.

It wasn’t as if I was twisting going for a shot, I just started getting twinges as I walked across the court.

Monday/Tuesday I was in a fair bit of pain.

The twinges were to the left of the knee cap but the pain referred on the outside of the right side of the right knee.

I volunteer at Giffnock North AAC kids’ track on a Wednesday evening and tested it out very slowly for 2.5M there. Things did not look good.

So when my friend Michael asked me whether I’d like to go out on Friday morning for a cheeky seven I of course said yes.

An hour’s zigzagging through cemeterires later and it was no worse than when I started.

The weekend saw a schloppy Linn Park 9-miler with Richard Saturday morning and a really slow solo 12-mile effort up the Braes early doors today, straight after listening to the boxing.

Eleven-minute miling:O).

Still, they all count and I’m sitting here at 4pm on Sunday feeling good, with no run planned until Tuesday evening. Plenty of time to rest and recover.

On another positive note, I’ve been sticking with the strength and conditioning for 15 minutes a day (that’s three weeks now) and if nothing else I’m getting the warm glow of feeling like I’m being a good boy.

Nutrition

Pretty good. Half a bottle of red Friday/Saturday and lots of healthy, fruity, vegetably eating.

Injuries

See above. The eccentric heel drops are definitely helping with the left Achilles and the right ankle is at bay (while the knee wins the battle for worst-injury supremacy).

Thoughts

Looks like I’m going to have to cobble together this training block. I simply can’t make any plans as yet; body won’t let me. Just need to get a few weeks of solid training in and strengthen that right knee.

The Week Ahead

Tuesday evening, Wednesday kid’s track, Thursday evening, Friday morning and see how that leaves me for the weekend. Onwards!