The Recovery

It's been three and a half weeks since my 70km effort in the TDS and I'm still feeling the effects. My knees have not been feeling great since the event. At least my back is now fine. I've been seeing an osteopath for the last three weeks and I'm slowly on the mend. The conclusion reached during his initial assessment was that my pelvis wasn't moving as well as it should, my spine was slightly out of alignment and parts of my erector spinae muscle needed releasing. We jointly concluded that running with sticks affected the normal running rotation in my pelvis and spine, which is what caused my back to seize up and what then contributed to my knee pain. This is a very simplified summary of the diagnosis.

My initial two osteopath appointments focused on freeing up my back and pelvis, with me then doing lots of stretching homework for my hips. In my last appointment we focused on my knees, and I was amazed at how different they felt after the appointment. At the start of the session my knees creaked like an old rusty hinge on a heavy door. By the time I was done they were almost silent. Then I drove home and called Ruth to come listen to my usually creaky old knees and was disappointed to discover they were creaky again. Hopefully my ongoing homework will slowly reverse this.

I've done a few smallish runs over the last few weeks. I generally feel ok when I am running. There's an initial 5 minutes of discomfort at the start of the run which then disappears once my muscles have warmed up. The problem then arises the next day when my knees feel as if they stiffen up. If I spend any more than 30 minutes sitting down my knees complain like mad when I get up. If I spend large amounts of time on my feet I seem to be ok. Unfortunately, not even personal trainers can spend all day standing up.

I have had my doubts as to whether I now can finish my 26 long run challenge, or even if I should continue. I have decided to include my 12 hour night run as one of the events. Initially I said it wouldn't count as I wanted all my runs to be events that would be recognised by the 100 marathon club. However, with my knees now complaining and the fact that I did run 61.3 miles during that one night run I've decided to include it. That means my total now stands at 18 runs made up of:

• 6 marathons
• 3 one day ultras of 50k, 35 miles and 50 miles.
• 3 x two day ultra runs of between 30 miles and 38 miles each day (6 runs in total)
• 1 x 12 hour run
• 1 x 24 hour run
• TDS run around Mont Blanc (70km completed out of 119km).

I am suppose to be running in the Ely Monster Marathon next Sunday. It is still my intention to give it a go, but I will be paying close attention to how I'm feeling and I expect my time to be very slow.

Now I'm off to focus on the latest exercises prescribed by my osteopath, Dan Rollins.