The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I’ve had a mixed time (training wise) the past couple of weeks.

Firstly the GOOD. I seem to have changed my gait slightly and begun mid-foot / toe striking instead of heel striking. I’ve also found my cadence has increased – I suspect one has led to the other, but I’m not yet sure which one is the chicken and which one is the egg…

Now the BAD. I had a great run home from the station the other night. Why is that bad you ask…. well my tracking system of choice (RunKeeper on Android) is all screwed up. At the end of a run, when you hit the big red STOP button, it asks you to enter some witty or profound comments to record along with your speed/time/distance data. This generally takes me an age to firstly get my breath back and get up off my knees, then enter a comment on a teensy touchscreen keyboard with trembling, sweaty fingers and smart arsed ‘autocorrect’ feature to get in the way.. Anyway, this time between hitting STOP and saving the comment was being added to my run time (an extra 84 seconds in this instance). So my fastest run in memory, looks like a pedestrian 7:17min/miler when it fact it was a slightly less pedestrian 6:46min/miler.

A known bug in version 2.10.0.4 apparently – fixed in 2.10.0.7. Pretty shoddy actually considering the whole purpose of the app is to record run data…

Now, finally on to the UGLY. I have ITB Syndrome. Everything is okay for around 4 miles then over the space of half a mile I go from regular plodder to some gurning, eejit from the Ministry of Funny walks. I’m working on stretching it and doing some recommended exercises, and I’ll keep running as far as I can before pain sets in.
I’m guessing it is down to the 30 miler I did in Oct, followed directly by no stretching and a 3 hour drive – with any luck, it’ll go of it’s own accord in time. I had/have my eye on the Oxford to Henley 50 miler in Feb – just have to see how things go…