If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’d know by now that I’m going to be doing the Knysna half marathon.

It’s in just over 2 weeks time! Eek!

I’m feeling quite despondent about my running at the moment actually. Just as I recover from one injury, I get another one!

For the last month, I’ve been struggling with an ITB injury. For those not in the know, it’s the tendon that runs past the knee. Thankfully it’s winter, so you can’t see the amazing bright pink strapping that I’m currently sporting. When I went to the physio on Monday, she told me I’d done a proper job at hurting myself.

Turns out, I’ve been strengthening the wrong glute muscles 🙁 so it’s back to the drawing board for me. Back to endless glute minimus and core exercises. I haven’t run in almost a week now.

It started a while ago, after I race walked the RAC 10km race. I felt it the next long distance training run I went on, and it’s been kind of downhill ever since then.

The only run where I didn’t feel it was the Soweto Run Walk for Life 10km race… which I incidently won! Yes, you read that right! I came first in the veteran women! How amazing is that? I’ll take that accolade… even though it was a tiny field 😉 On that subject, if you see it on Entry Time next year, sign up, it’s a gorgeous race through the small streets in Soweto. Loved the support with loads of kids cheering you from their gardens in jarmies.

 

So, now it’s Knysna coming up. Although it’s a downhill race, the profile scares the living daylights out of me… how crazy is the last hill?! Apparently the road can also be quite slippery so it’s pretty treacherous too. After this year of knee injuries caused by downhills, I’m going to be walking that!

I haven’t really done a long training run in the last few weeks. Last weekend’s 16km was cut short at 12km because of my knee giving in… and I managed to hobble back home.

And now, because of my ITB, I’m probably not going to able to run a long run before the time. Instead I have to concentrate on strength training for my butt and conditioning my core! Starting this weekend, I’ll have to slowly build up for the race distance again.

I should really be fine though. I’ve got enough fitness to get through the race, and my body has done plenty of 21km’s now. I would prefer to do this knowing that I’ve run more longer distances, but hey, what can I do?

I’m definitely not going to be pushing too much. I don’t want to do long-term damage to my legs which will cause me to stop running.

On a brighter note… I’m really looking forward to the trip, and to running through the forests!! Be prepared to get bombarded with photos on Instagram and my blog 😉