Week three of Boston training actually saw something very radical happening - I did some running for the first time in 3 months. The new 'specialist' doctor came up with the brilliant idea of putting a thin cork wedge in my shoe, gave me some strengthening exercises and said to give running a whirl, but only a minute at a time mind.
Even a minute is better than nothing, so Sunday saw 10 X 1 minute with 4 minutes recovery between each stint. Despite the fun and excitement of being out in the trails it was alarmingly hard to breathe!! Rehab is all about small increments, and as I was writing the training plan, I increased the next day to 20 X 1 min with 1 min recovery, then Tuesday was 5 X 5 minutes, Wednesday was 40 minutes with a break half way, wow that was nearly a real run! There was still some dull pain but not the sharp burning under the foot where the tendon attached.
Running soft surface helped. This time of year with the El Nino effect and constant rain, anywhere on the trails is so soft its fairly liquid and the biggest challenge is actually progressing forwards. My feet were squelching and sliding but both me and my running companion Poppy (the Popstar) were really happy to finally get out of the stifling spin studio and start to get the legs working again.
One of the things I miss most about living in Pennsylvania, apart from my lovely running gals, was the gorgeous Valley Green with its broad earth path under the lush green canopy which runs alongside the fast flowing Wissahickon. Castle Rock park was the closest we had to this natural beauty and running mecca. The rock formations and sand base means that even in the heaviest downpour a lot of the trail is runnable and there is none of the loamy or clay soil that we see on shell ridge or the other trails to build up into impossible platform shoes, leaving you teetering 9 inches off the ground.
With ice cold streams every 10 minutes it was offered the wonderful bonus of an ice bath for the foot, any time the dull pain came back running through those shockingly cold streams seemed to do away with any return of tendonitis. Poppy the insanely bouncy and energetic English Springer was in her element, dive bombing me from high cliffs and splashing her way through the streams, adding several speedier miles on to my dirt slow run with her constant back and forth exploring the side trails.
After a few moments of disappearance I saw her black and white dot on the hillside with a huge flurry of large black feathers as she had managed to track down and land a huge clutch of wild turkeys - so fat and slow she might even be able to grab one, despite it being rather a large mouthful for a small puppy. As usual she jumped back down onto the main trail landing right in my face and barking as if to say 'speed it up buddy!!'
So the end of the week saw me finally manage 60 minutes of running, and 6 miles covered past the Hole in the Rock, Kiss the Fence, The Lake and The Post and heading up to BBQ Terrace. This was of course still 20 miles short of where I needed to be in 3 months time but it was a glorious start. One of the high school runners had asked me at practice how my injury was, and I proudly announced I had managed 25 minutes - he looked aghast and said 'don't you have a marathon in a few weeks - how are you going to manage it'. At that moment my own joy was also soured and I was momentarily deflated. Then, after the pang, I thought about it mathematically. If I had only been able to run for 10 minutes on Sunday and in a week I had managed to get to 60 minutes, there was every chance I could get from 6 miles to 26 miles in 13 weeks - you just had to believe it is possible!
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