I thought I’d kick start the Hot Foot blog by introducing
some regular posts, including this one: Training Tuesday. Every fortnight I’ll
be filling you in on how my marathon training is going, so you can follow along
with my progress culminating in April 2014’s Brighton Marathon!
To nudge my training into action, I have signed up for an
autumn half marathon (Richmond half on 22nd September) and am using
a Runner’s World beginner’s half marathon training plan. Unfortunately, just two weeks
in, I have been experiencing some knee pain, which frantic googling and self
diagnosing leads me to believe may be iliotibial band syndrome, or the dreaded
runner’s knee. Apparently this can be caused by increasing training too quickly,
or having weak legs or hips.
I was told by a physiotherapist that I needed to strengthen
my legs after experiencing Achilles tendinopathy (which meant taking a few
months off running), last year. Since
then, I’ve been squatting, planking, dipping and press-upping once or twice a
week, but I think that judging by this new injury, I may need to step up the
strength to combat this weakness. I found a great article on the Guardian
website about runners and strength, including a really interesting bit about
how squatting with 200lbs (eek!) helped Mo Farah improve his running.
On paper, this is brilliant, but I have to admit that I find
doing the same exercises more than a few times a week, or for more than 20
minutes a bit of a challenge. Also, I don’t have much space at home, am easily
distracted by anything and constantly find myself being licked by the dog as
soon as I’m on my yoga mat, so may struggle with doing more strength. When mulling over this problem
I decided to investigate crossfit, which I’ve read a lot about on the internet. According to the Crossfit London website, ‘Crossfit is a strength
and conditioning system built on constantly varied, if not randomized, functional
movements executed at high intensity.’
If you’re a crossfit beginner, you are asked to go along to
7 initial sessions to learn how to do all the moves properly, so I signed up
for a squatting class last week at the Bethnal Green centre. I’m not sure how I’d been doing squats before,
but it definitely wasn’t the crossfit way! My thighs were on fire! The class
was really fun, with a mix of men and women of different abilities, and the
instructor was very friendly, scaling each activity to each participant and
correcting our form. The group dynamic was really motivating, and at the end
I felt that I’d quite like to go back.
Whilst I think I may have found one way to address my weak
legs in the long term, in the short term I am resting the knee and have scheduled
an appointment with an osteopath. If I can get over this first hurdle, I may be
squatting 200lbs and running long distance in no time! 