Week 4

Sooner or later as a runner, unless you're exceptionally lucky and have perfect leg alignment, you come up against the old demon of injury. Injury is your body's way of telling you to slow down, or stop running like a demented chicken, or that it's just fed up of taking the shock of whacking 11 stone of skin and bones down onto the pavement for weeks on end. Through a combination of fate and prudent self-management, my injuries have been mostly minor. They've affected most parts of my legs at various stages, so that they've almost become a measure of my development.
My natural running style is an invite to severe injury. I have the kind of bow legs that when pressed together look like a giant wishbone. When I put them together my knees almost head-butt each other. In my early running days, as I got tired I'd kick my legs out to the side so that they twirled like cheerleaders' ribbons. Inevitably that took its toll on my knees, which throbbed after every outing. Though even this was a step forward from my very first runs, which left me with such severe blisters that I could barely make it up the street to the pub the next day for a consoling pint.
Because of this vulnerability I've made a point of dedicating every autumn, when I'm furthest away from the racing calendar and can afford to slack off the pace, to concentrating on my running style and making every stride more efficient. Gradually I learned to rein in this tendency to swing my legs outwards, mostly by pumping my arms more vigorously, which naturally drives the knees upwards and means the legs go out in front rather than dangling behind you. It's also more efficient in general. Needless to say, in the early stages I exaggerated the pumping arms and was rewarded with some copycat disco-dance moves by the satirical geniuses who frequent Queen's Park in Glasgow (and while we're on this point, can the people who heckle runners from their backfiring cars please learn some new songs? Keep On Running is older than most of you are, you imagination-starved losers).
Instead I developed a new problem: I tend to run on my toes. I discovered this when buying shoes one time, when I was introduced to that fear-inducing, but invaluable tool, the video treadmill. By viewing my running action from behind, I realised that my heels barely hit the ground, possibly a legacy of my school days as an 800m runner (albeit a woefully bad one). This was putting unnatural strains on my calves, and sure enough they were rebelling at the prospect. Three years ago I suffered my first serious injury, a calf twinge that seemed mild, but would flare up almost exactly 40 minutes into every run. I nursed it gingerly, went swimming for a few weeks, reduced it to a nagging pain and decided to do the thing that every coach tells you not to do - chance my arm (or rather leg) in a race situation.
It seemed fine. The Glasgow 10K has never been one of my favourite races, but it seemed to be going smoothly enough. It felt like someone was plucking a string in my leg every time my left foot hit the pavement, but it wasn't hampering me unduly. I was making steady progress to the finish - no danger to my PB, but no disgrace either - until I got to 100 metres from the finish on the shoulder of another runner. I pulled off to the right, pushed the accelerator, and suddenly that plucking string went with an almost audible twang. I covered the last few seconds of the race like a shot soldier bolting for the safety of his trench, somehow speeding up even as I lurched to the finish line on one and a half legs. I hobbled to the physio tent, got some relief for my tender calf and didn't lace up my trainers for another six weeks.
Luckily that injury subsided altogether. More recently I've been plagued by something that strikes fear into runners - tendinitis. It started last year, frustratingly just at a time when I was making real inroads into my PB. Again I laid off, went swimming, came back a few weeks later and realised, with a sinking feeling, that I hadn't entirely shrugged it off. The problem this time was that I had a charity race lined up. Somehow I made it through three weeks of preparation, ran the race within an ace of my personal best, and went on to run another 10K the following week. But I couldn't disguise the pain that my achilles tendons announced every time I set out for a run. The ruinous thing about tendinitis is that it goes away after a couple of miles, so that you can easily fool yourself it's no big deal, only to revisit you with a vengeance when you wake up the next morning, like a vicious hangover. And it is, left ignored, one of the most malignant injuries known to runners. And it's the same sensation that has been screaming up at me from the legs for the last few weeks since I started running again in earnest. On Tuesday I realised I could no longer ignore it. I hobbled around my four-mile route, having upped the weekly mileage the week before, came inside, limped off to work and decided, with an air of resignation, that rest was the only solution.
So there you have it. The ravages of the body have taken their toll. A rest of at least three weeks, and possibly longer. And if it gets really serious, I'll have to consider going swimming again. But only if it's really, really serious, because I really, really hate swimming.

Runs completed: 4.2 miles
Week's mileage: 4.2
Total mileage: 50.6
Shoe mileage: Saucony 42.2
Fitness level: 60%