Training....

After the pain of missing the marathon and the weeks of injury it was important to learn the lessons from the injury, and I hope I have. From what I have read on the internet and what I've been told tendonitis is mainly an overuse injury, if a guy has it in his wrist there is a fair chance he's been choking too many chickens. In my case it seems I was doing too many miles on hard ground, my PB half marathon and the lack of a good rest afterwards was the tipping point, my leg said it couldn't take any more.

The lesson I've learnt is that I have to mix up my training, add in different activities so that different parts of my body pick some of the slack. Before the injury I stopped playing football, using my bike, swimming, trekking, all so that I could focus on my running. It is easy to do, if you download almost any marathon or half-marathon training programme there is no space for anything but running, you focus on the weekly mileage which leaves no energy for anything else. Then when you do pick up an injury and miss a couple of weeks of training there is no mention in these training programs of where you should start when you get back, so with the aim of getting your long run close to a full marathon you do more miles than before you got injured, putting even more pressure on your body.

I'm taking the main principals from internet training plans, namely:

• Gradually building up my Sunday morning long run until I'm comfortable running 20+ miles about 3-4 weeks before D-day.
• Tapering in the last couple of weeks, so I'm feeling strong on race day.
• Occasional training sessions running up hills and doing speedwork. 

And the differences, cross-training, flexibility and reliance on my own common sense rather than a one size fits all program. I'm not suggesting for a moment that I know more than the coaches and experienced runners writing training programs, just that I want a training program that fits around me and not me fitting around it, and that's impossible unless I do it my own way. We'll see how it works out!