Booster rocket fails to egnite

After an enforced break due to Tibialis Posterier issues and 10 days in the Lac Lemain region and and specifically St. Prex it was time to see if the rest and orthotics had done the job or not. And the only way to do that is to be at the corner of Chiswell Street and Bunhill Row at 12:30 on a Tuesday and see if the injury withstands a Locketts Rocket's session.

Around 15 plus rockets waited to blast off and in amongst them I was pleased to see Karen, Sarah and Martin. While all of them are faster than me I was hoping to keep up with them to some extent. Some neat Hare and Hound style traffic management meant Martin and I were leading the pack up to the start, but the injection of pace on the road might not have been an ideal move. The uber elite simply accelerated to catch and overtake ramping up the otherwise acceptable pace to the start.

Someone is following a runners world program and so a request for 12 times 90 on with 60 recovery and no middle rest was granted. Martin grinned as he joined me at the back, tucked in behind Karen and Sarah. Reps one and two were comfortable and strong. Rep three was hard and by rep four I'd lost the plot and was nowhere. At the end of rep five Martin was heading back after five as he had a meeting to go to and so we decided to turn there and do the five reps back together. I was useless on those and Martin very kindly waited for me at the end of each effort and we jogged through the recovery together. I nearly kept up on the penultimate rep to save some dignity, but on the last any thought of racing was swept away by Martin's ability to quite simply to run faster than I can.

And Tibialis Posterier? Well. No gel, simply stretching and being totally single minded about every single foot fall hitting mid-sole first and lifting the leg rather than toeing off, seems to have done it. Malcolm Balk would have been proud of me. Thighs became stiff (good sign as using the powerful muscles) later in the day and I cramped up on the way home on the train and at 10:20pm still feel like I was working hard today. So a success of a peculiar kind. No booster firing, but all systems are functioning once again and so as Arnie once said "I'll be back!".