Rob's Running Blog

1 Mile and Bye Bye Hamstring – again!

It seemed a cold day for a run – too cold. Wind blowing, not nice at all. Something told me it wasn’t a good day for running, but the fatal Facebook effect took hold – lots of people posting results and pictures from the Wilmslow Half. Surely if people could go out and race 13 miles on such a freezng awful day, I could go out and run 3 or 4 miles slow just to keep the miles in my legs, right? Wrong!

Set off and was aware of feeling incredibly cold, my hands going red and numb almost immediately. Just settled into a very slow pace, and clicked through 1k with no trouble. Coming up to the mile mark and planning a route in my head, was envisioning a nice gentle loop and doing about 5 miles, when twang, my hamstring blows. Walked for a little then tried to jog at a barely above walking pace, but twang, sayonara, sucker… You aren’t running for a while again.

So 9 miles on Monday, a faster 5k on Thursday (though still over 31 minutes), and a gentle trot today (was just turning 11 minutes at the one mile point) and twang, off it goes – looks like there is no rhyme or reason and I am not going to be able to trust my legs for an awfully long time as one day I can run, and get a nice pace or distance done, a few days later, it’s like I have a different pair of legs.

I think my days of running sub 50 10ks and sub 24 5ks, and in fact going for any kind of running intensity at all, are effectively over, incredibly frustrating when I read of people my age or a lot older running hard and doing well, as my body just keeps letting me down and stopping me doing one of the things that I really enjoy 🙁

Maybe I shall take up knitting until his effing cold weather effs off back to effing Siberia!