Emmet: 30th September - 6th October

Further to my week off training, with full on use of anti-inflammatories i was not after getting better as i found out after 2 days running.

After Monday's training i felt a little bit groggy and at the time only competed 3 miles, as i feared my knee would act up again and didn't want to push it too much.

Tuesday felt a lot better and as i had decided to register for the winter league, i also in turn decided to complete the 3 mile course; twice; at speed :) I thought to myself that i would rather know as far away from the marathon if my problem had been fixed, but after the 6 miles i felt to be a little sore. Little did i know that the following day i would be in a lot more pain & back to square 1.

A swift decision was made to change physio for a 3rd time as i felt the previous guy wouldn't yield results. And it was this swift choice that is eventually yielding results.

In a nutshell, my increased mileage & quicker training speeds caused more of an inwards roll,in turn twisting my knee inwards and putting pressure on it resulting in all the pain. The problem wasn't stemming from my knee at all as previous physios had stated & even worked on. This rolling, caused my quads, hip and back to tighten up massively. So at physio these muscles and areas were manipulated to loosen them up. I was given certain exercises to constantly release the muscles over the next couple of days. And these i believe worked a treat.

Further to my session i was advised to take three days off and then trash out a 6+ mile run at speed to test the knee which i did.

Another session today {Monday 7th October} to see the what the after effects of my run from Sunday were. The knee was no where near as tight but i was told it was slightly after tightening back up.

Continuous work on it, a part session of acupuncture to settle the area down, knee now strapped up to pull the kneecap back into its original place and I'm almost like a new man.

Further to this i will have one more session on Friday as my last before Amsterdam. And to note i will have to strap the knee up for racing and training to prevent soreness.

All is good, it actually helps to find a qualified person who knows what they are doing.

Below is my weeks mileage:

Monday: 3 miles @ avg 8:21 pace {general}
Tuesday:6 miles @ 7:55 pace {tempo}
Wednesday: Physio
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: 7 miles @ 7:48 pace {tempo}

Total weeks mileage: 16 miles.

It has been a very bad few weeks but things seem positive at last, hopefully I can kick on from here.