Painful Neccessity

Another £70 has come in this week, leaving only another £1025 to meet my £2500 target.  Everyone is so generous, thank you.  Of course, I would dearly love to raise a lot more.  I've just come back from a funeral visit, listening to a lovely lady talking about her husband's losing battle with cancer and the indignities it inflicted on him.  Every pound raised brings closer the day when all cancers will be cured.

This week's big news is my visit to the physio on Thursday.  Apparently, if a calf strain is left to heal in its own time, it will do so leaving a knot of scar tissue which is less flexible than normal muscle.  For day to day activity, this is not a problem.  But for running, it is a permanent weak point, making the muscle more likely to break down again in future.

The solution is to break down the scar tissue by deep massage, followed by icing the area to limit bleeding, and interspersed with regular stretching to encourage the healing tissue to align itself in the right way.  This treatment is enhanced by strengthening exercises.

If you think that deep massage sounds painful, you would be right!  The physio supplemented it with some ultrasound treatment, and told me to get David to do the massage for 5 minutes a day for the next five days. Apparently I won't be able to do it hard enough to be effective myself, as it's too painful. I then go to the physio again for another treatment, and then all being well I will be cleared to run. He wants me to demonstrate that I can hop 50 times on the injured leg - I managed 40 yesterday, so I am highly optimistic that I will get the go-ahead.

This time my return to running will be even more cautious - short segments of slow running amid a lot of walking.  I will increase the running only very gradually.  I will make up the rest of the time when I would have been running with various crosstraining activities - mainly elliptical crosstrainer, exercise bike and rowing machine.  For the first week (or maybe two or three) I'll do my running on the treadmill, as this can guarantee me a flat even surface, which is what I need at the beginning.

So - ten weeks to marathon day, and feeling optimistic.  There is still a long way to go, and - for the next five days at least - more painful kneading of my calf to be endured.  I've also got to be disciplined with the stretching and strengthening exercises, and with the crosstraining.  Some people say they find running boring - I can't understand that, since to me it is a joy. But the cardio equipment in the gym, that truly is boring!! I did an hour this morning, and got through it by dint of listening to some of my favourite songs from my youth on my new sporty MP3 player.

So, there you go.  Months ago, one of the runners on fetcheveryone.com told me that getting to the starting line of a marathon is an achievement in itself, and often underestimated.  I am starting to think he may have been right!