The injury…

I was tapering. It was a week and a half before the marathon. No niggles, I was feeling great.

That week I ran a few short runs, 7k and 10k. I rode my bike to work (8k each way) two days in a row.

Felt a slight twinge. Ran a couple of easy runs afterwards and feeling sore.

My last run was on Saturday morning a week and one day before the marathon. 20k with my brother in law. Slow, around 6.15. Got progressively sore through the run.

Limped on Sunday and saw a mate who’s done a fair bit of sports chiro / osteo etc. Said I’d be lucky to run. Had trouble putting trousers on in morning (standing on one leg), and had to change method of getting into the car (bum first then legs in).

Rested for a week and still was sore. Was gutted, but still determined to start and finish. Started and new I was done in the first 2k. Ran 6k then pulled out when I couldn’t raise my leg to run up a gutter.

It’s a pretty bad feeling to DNF a marathon. I did a lot of googling to work out whether I was really injured or just had low tolerance to pain.

One thing gave me comfort. I think on livestrong there’s a post about if you have to change your style to cope with pain then that’s not good and you should stop. I was doing that after the first k when thinking about how I could make it through…

This was September 2018