This year has been really bad for running:

  • Storms / powercuts
  • Fake Covid
  • Real Covid
  • Knee injury
  • Broken ribs
  • Moving home

Moving home has sucked from a running point of view. The obvious one was losing all my beautiful country running routes, which I knew was going to happen and so I’m glad I made the most of things over the last few years. But less obviously the whole process took so long and so much of my “spare” time I kind of had two months off running. There were bits of running during that time, but not like I used to. Completely unanticipated by me (I will be naïve until I die) was how moving would change the dynamic of family life and how that would affect running: In the new house it just isn’t possible for me to get up early and sneak out running without disturbing anyone (or, more importantly, the dog). And early morning, especially Sunday, runs was how I got my distance in and how I stayed sane and happy.

Anyway, with moving finally finished and us settled in I looked to find a new running routine now early mornings were out. I have about an hour each morning on school days I could use, so second day back at school (was too busy the first day) I went out for a really nice 10k. It was raining, but it was still great. A really nice route with long stretches away from traffic and a bit of woodland as well. It seemed to go perfectly. When A got back from doing the school-run (now much longer, another story, but hence the time to get out for 10k) I’d been back a short-while and was ready to go out with her. We did a shorter run and I could feel that my knee felt a bit iffy, but it was a nice steady run and also seemed to go ok.

Not long afterwards though my knee started feeling bad and then proceeded to get worse and worse. I quickly went from thinking “I’ll have tomorrow off running”, to “I’m having at least a month off running”. I was gutted - it just felt so unfair. I think I’ve screwed it the worse I have ever done and I thought it was bad enough when I knackered it at the start of the year. On the day of the injury I couldn’t walk across the room and had to hop across. For the first couple of days I couldn’t help walk the dogs. That went down well. Two weeks later I could walk with a hobble/limp and my knee was still a bit swollen. Three weeks later I managed to walk 10k, which was pretty cool, but with a bit of limp by the end of it and it felt sore afterwards - although was no worse the next day. Into week four and I’m now trying waking without a knee support on. So far so good.

I decided to not even risk yoga (knee bending or twisting - yikes!) during this first month and just focus on walking. Somehow I have mostly stayed sane during the past four weeks. Hopefully I can at least start getting back into some kind of yoga soon though. And maybe I’ll then try a little run with A to see what happens. Although I think perhaps I should admit defeat on running, but on the other hand what else can I do?