Running Streak Ends – Inury Bites

A year of running both injury and illness free has finally come to an end thanks to a thigh strain on my right leg. I felt some tightness and soreness following my run in the sleet at Bexley parkrun but nothing worse than the general aches and pains of marathon training. I then completed 22 miles the following day where I felt the odd twinge but nothing of any real pain that would stop me from running. The next day I was limping slightly and realised that the pain was a lot sharper than any normal ache so decided to take 2 days of rest to let it clear.

Here I sit just over 2 weeks later and my only run has been a very slow 5km, where I thought the injury had cleared but some minor pain returned the next day. My leg now feels pretty much healed and through Internet led self-diagnosis I have rated this as a grade 1 quadriceps strain, which should clear with 3 weeks of rest.

I will go for a short run on Friday to make sure that my leg is ok and then return to running again next week once we finish our holiday and return to the UK (more on that in a separate blog post). I have missed the final 3 weeks of my marathon training and officially hit the taper next week. I am not going to beat myself up about the missed training and try to force extra mileage into the taper period.

My suspicion is that I picked up the initial injury at Bexley parkrun and then aggravated it further on the long run around Windsor. This type of injury can be brought about running in cold conditions with inadequate warm-up, which matches up exactly to the conditions present at Bexley and Windsor. In the future I will make sure to warm-up no matter how horrible it is weather wise.