It's been a very quiet start to the year after my hamstring had a tantrum at around 0945 on Tuesday 27 December. My training programme for the Farnborough Half on 22 January had been going so well, but the injury that I had last July returned with a vengeance. I'd actually started feeling a slight grumble on finishing the Telford 10k in December. Like an eejit I hoped it would go away and of course it didn't.
I went to see Chris the sports massage guy, and his thumb of death was more painful than ever. He gave me a set of stretches to do twice a day, and I backed off running completely for a while. I tried fast-walking Southampton parkrun on New Year's Day, and my pleasure at going sub-40 minutes was rather undone by annoying the hammy.
By the middle of January I was up to running gentle 12k runs, and I thought I was fixed again. I ran Lanhydrock parkrun at pace, and that wasn't terribly clever. Three easy weeks later I ran Halford Forest parkrun. I intended to treat it as a tempo run, but I got in a fight with a teenager and accidentally ended up in first place. I held my breath for 24 hours... and I was OK.
So it's now a question of gently, tentatively returning to normality. The chart below shows my two recent hamstring troubles as dips in the road. I have places booked at both Eastleigh 10k and Salisbury 10 mile in the second half of March. I'm hoping to do one of these but I'm not sure which to plump for. Watch this space!
