Jonathan Garner Blog!

Posted on 6th February 2017

Injuries, the runner, it’s not just a physical thing.

When I last wrote, I may have mentioned about a of small niggle that I was dealing with, well it didn’t improve it became considerably worse. I tried to improve things by asking friends in the running community, and searching Youtube for anything that would help me improve my injury. There is a depth of knowledge out there, and I’m pleased to say that it was a great help, listening to other runners and also the staff from The Lincolnshire Runner was fantastic.

Whilst trying out the advice given and reading up on various ways to improve my situation, my running got harder and harder. I new I had to develop my long runs in preparedness for my first Marathon. All I could think was, how on earth do I get past 6 miles let alone 26.2! It seemed that all would be fine for the first 3 to 4 miles, and then, slowly but surely the knee pain would slide into view. As the miles flow by, the focus became sharper and sharper until such a point that it was laser sharp. So the cycle would go like this; run easy with little mileage, great, rest one day, Increase mileage, still easy, pain comes in, rest some more, start again. All the time this is happening I’m continuing to do active recovery during my rest days, static stretching, riding my pushbike. Grumpy? Withdrawn? Isolated? Negative? Irritable? Just some of the kinder words I can use to explain who, or how I was at this point. Every couple of runs, I think I have a breakthrough, so I’ll just eek out a little more mileage…….

And here is the BUT, with my first Marathon approaching very quickly, and I felt that I needed professional advice, albeit at a cost!

So it was with reluctance that I booked in with Great Northern Physiotherapy for an initial assessment.

The assessment confirmed that I had a problem with my Iliotibial Band, which was the cause of my knee pain, anyone who’s experienced this will know how frustrating the recovery is. What I can say is, the reception from Phil Williams and his team has been superb, matched up with the 5 star treatment I have been receiving.

The treatment then, well aside from the obvious trips to the clinic, I have been given homework, involving a variety of exercises and controlled movement, followed up more recently with running drills, part of which involve Plyometrics, all very exciting.

The treatment I was not expecting, and please don’t let this put anyone off….

Dry Needling!

(the treatment of trigger points for persons with myofascial pain syndrome, dry needling is an invasive procedure in which a filiform needle is inserted into the skin and muscle directly at a myofascial trigger point)

And Cupping!

(is an ancient form of alternative medicine in which a therapist puts special cups on your skin for a few minutes to create suction. People get it for many purposes, including to help with pain, inflammation, blood flow, relaxation and well-being, and as a type of deep-tissue massage)

I have to be honest here, this style of treatment has been a breakthrough. Sure, the problems are there both in my knee, and in my head, however, I am running and the knee is improving all the time. I’m fairly certain that a lot of endurance athletes go through this and most, if not all come through it in a fitter, stronger position.

So has my mileage increased? Yes in run length, and no in frequency. I feel at the moment that each planned run, must be assessed mentally and physically, it is almost like a safeguard I’ve created without realising. I wanted to be achieving 2 long runs, 2 recovery runs and a tempo run each week, but I find this incredibly difficult right now. Balancing my home life with my wife plus two young children, a full time job as a Lorry driver (with very unsocial early starts, and frustrating shift pattern), maybe training for a Marathon is a bit too much? I’m not convinced it is, and I know within myself, that no matter how difficult it gets, I won’t give up. I just have to keep telling myself it will be worth it, I really want to see the look on the faces of my children as I cross the line at the end of my first Marathon, and prove to myself that I’m stronger than I think.

I’ve managed a couple of long runs recently, mixed with some shorter faster runs, and the confidence is growing. I would like to share with you, my two most recent long runs. It was one, if not the coldest day we’ve had here in Lincoln for a while and I remember seeing the temperature at the time as -2’c, with a predicted real feel of -10’c, how do I feel? Tired? Yes, I’ve been at work for the past five days, and the youngest child awoke earlier than usual, grrr. What about anything else? A head cold perhaps? Sniffly? Yes, that is also annoying me. So you would of thought that would stop runners, right? Well actually no, I had mileage to accumulate and experience to gain. I had a route planned, I had water and a little snack to get me through, so of I went. A success! 16.7 miles, my longest at this point. I was very cold, very tired, but ultimately very happy. Yes the knee was sore, I did actually manage to keep my heart rate around my target, averaging 142bpm, and amazingly, my minute mile pace was 8:40 to 9:40 per mile. The emphasis on that run was to keep my heart rate below 145bpm for the entire run.

And the most recent? It should be titled “ A lesson in how not to pace a long run”. I arranged to meet a runner friend for the first few miles of my long run, I should mention, he is also recovering from injury. We both agreed to a pace that would be comfortable, and of we went…. Six miles at an average of something resembling sub 7:50 miles, and I should have binned it at the drop off point for my friend. I didn’t, I thought, ‘hey, it will be fine, use the next couple for miles to recover your heart rate from 162bpm and all will be good…’, well that didn’t work! I decided in the the end to run on feel, as the HR training had well and truly gone. So, I ran the remainder of the run cursing myself, all 11.4 miles of it. World of hurt!, as I approached the final few miles, I knew I was in trouble. I started to get twitches in my calves, I described it to a friend as ‘bubbling’, her response which made me chuckle was ‘dancing calves’. Furthermore, my stomach had started tightening, and now, I was fighting all manner of arguments in my head – stop!, no, don’t stop, it’s only a little further, – your body is done, rest up now and walk, fight another day.. And so it continued, as did I, all the way home, with only the slightest of walk breaks. I know I have never been in that place before. All I could hear in my head was ‘zip up that mansuit!’, for those of you who listen to a certain podcast. So, 17.4 miles of emotion and mind games, but still, the longest run to date. Roll on Manchester Marathon, April 2nd 2017.