At last I have a chance to sit down and update the site. Folks following me on http://www.twitter.com/runography will have a good idea of my progress, for those reading the blog only, you probably thought I slipped off the face of the planet, or at least had given up on the idea of updating the site. The tweets were appearing on the rhs of the site, so that should have given a clue.
I’m into week 10 of the marathon training and things have been getting harder and harder. I had gotten up to an 18 mile run at the start of week 6. It was a hard run with the last 2 miles being harder than any I’d done previously but I was expecting this, I was upping the distance after all. The day after this my Gran passed away, we were very close and as you can imagine, this was a difficult time, it knocked my training off course for a bit, but she was proud that I was trying the marathon, so she’ll be glad I got back to training.
I had been due to do a 20 miler at the beginning of week 7, but switched this to the end of Week 7. I started off really well, feeling good. I covered the first 10 miles in a good time and was still feeling fairly good. By 13 miles though I was starting to feel my legs tightening up and by 15 miles my right knee was in real pain. I stopped at 16.5 miles and got picked up by Ann as I couldn’t make it home. At work a few days later I tried a 6 mile run and again got pain on my right knee, this time after only 3.5 miles. I decided to book an appointment with a Physio, having never visited a Physio before this was new territory for me.
The Physio (Jon Trevena, based at Esporta in Hamilton, Scotland for my international readers), diagnosed the issue as being caused by having tight I.T. Bands whatever they are! 
Well I know now anyway — I.T. Bands ( Iliotibial Bands ) is a thick band of fibrous tissue that runs down the outside of the leg. If this is too tight then it can cause friction with the knee joints and become inflamed and painful. The treatment, lots of stretching (a modified Thomas Test) to try and lenghten the I.T. Bands.
Long story short, I’m still suffering pain from this, my run on Saturday was supposed to be 16miles, but 5 miles in and the pain returned, I ran on it for another 3 miles and had to quit, too sore. I limped around for the rest of the day. It’s annoying as my cardio training was going well, but if my leg is knackered I can’t do much about it.
I visited Achilles Heal today, a specialist running shop in Glasgow, to get my running style analysed and to check if my shoes could be contributing to this. After 45 minutes of analysis including a few stints on the treadmill with video analysis they reckon my shoes are fine for my style of running, so I don’t need to buy a different type, but I could benefit from Sports Massage, which would break down the I.T.Band fibers and make it easier to lengthen it when stretching. I’ve booked myself in for this, can’t be giving up on the marathon training at this stage, only 6 weeks to go and I want to give it my best shot.
Now I’m worried about the pain, these Sports Masseurs don’t mess about, in fact they asked me if I was prepared to cry 
I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow am.