Brian again....

Buoyed by my Gala 10K PB on Sunday, and celebrating the virtual absence of my left calf niggle, decided to do a 'longer' one on Tuesday club night. Ran down to the club (about 4 miles) caught up with the crowd then upped the pace a bit for the remaining 9 miles. Seemed to work quite well - ran with Frank and Graeme which kept the tempo up, then left them and returned to the club. Nice route, out through John Muir park, back out the old A1 then through West Barns to Dunbar. Kept a decent pace going, around 8.15 average, thanks to them both.



Mid week 'longer' ones take their toll if you are a nine till fiver like me, so rested up Wednesday. Joy of joys, intervals beckoned on Thursday so sauntered down for 4 X 800m and 4 X 400m at the club. First 2 X 800m felt ok, managed sub 3m for both, then disaster, the right hand calf decided to niggle, then pretty rapidly after the 3rd 800m it contorted in an inexplicably sudden, agonising tightness - FFS, what the hell is going on? Anyway, I 'manfully' (read stoopid) attempted the first 400m of the 4, but then cowed off the track and took some sage advice from Ian Rowland on stretching.

I was literally struggling to walk on it on last night and this morning, so, having taken a day's leave on Friday, felt obliged to indulge my mild obsession (is that an oxymoron?) of fly fishing. Drove down to the Tweed near Peebles and had a very pleasant few hours fishing for trout. What has this go to do with running you say? Well, I started wading, stuck a thermometer in the water, and the bleeding temperature was 42 degrees - FFS, its the middle of April - anyway, goretex chest high waders don't have very good insulating properties so the virtual ice bath seemed to have a medicinal effect on the right calf. The sun was out, the odd fish was rising and my calf was soothed - life is good again. I even caught a couple of fish, an 18" grayling and a 14" trout.

The 'ice bath'

Re-invigorated by the fishing, and with a becalmed calf, I decided to have a gentle 'bimble' of a few miles when I got home - dead slow, nice and easy, no pressure, you get the picture. And it was very enjoyable (and very slow - 11 miles at 9.43 min/mile ave) BUT, calf was intact at the end, I enjoyed the run, and had a couple of bottles of banana bread beer to look forward to at the end.