A right pain in the arse

Those of you that are familiar with this blog will probably already be aware of my previous troublesome Periformas muscle. For those of you that don't know what this is though, it is a tiny muscle that is tucked in behind the glutes that is difficult to get to and so not exactly straightforward to stretch or massage. Basically the only treatment that can get in to the area is for you to have an elbow jammed in around the buttock region. It is every bit as painful and uncomfortable as it sounds! Unfortunately for me, it is a problem that I have become all to familiar with in the last 2 years or so, as I have increased my mileage.

The troublesome Periformas flared up again this week, after a nice period of 8 weeks or so without any problems. It meant that I was unable to train for three day from Monday to Wednesday and at one point made me extremely doubtful for the latest race in the interclub series - which was on Thursday. As the injury has become a relatively common thing for me in recent months, the only positive thing about that is that I have gained more of an awareness about when the problem is starting to rear its head and how I can best begin to start my recovery and rehabilitation to make it a swift turnaround. Previously, this sort of problem has kept me out of action for 7-10 days, so a three day lay off is definitely a step in the right direction.

If you suffer from the injury yourself, I have found the best method of treatment is to seek physio swiftly, but also there are some stretches you can do yourself a couple of times a day (lie flat on your back and pull your knee up towards your chest tight, and move slowly side to side until you feel the muscle start to pull, then hold for approx 20 seconds), whilst the foam roller or a tennis ball can come in handy to sit down on the buttock and roll over.

Thankfully, despite the frustration of missed miles and training at the start of the week, I was able to just about recover in time to race for my club at Lytham interclub on the Thursday evening. Lytham's event is a flat 5 miler along the front, pretty much 2.5 miles each way out and back. Typically, after a lovely few days of weather in the build up to the race, on the day itself, there was a strong howling headwind for the first half of the race.

Numbers have once again swelled this year for the club series, with some 413 representatives of the 7 local clubs turning out in force to support their sides. It has made for a superb atmosphere at both of the races so far this year, so hopefully the series continues to gather more popularity in the future and the series can go from strength to strength to strength. 

From a Wesham perspective, off the back of a surprise men's team victory at Blackpool in April, we were looking to follow that up with another strong showing at Lytham, and we were bolstered by a few great additions in Joe Monk (1st claim Blackburn) and the return of Les Cornwall. It is fantastic to see us trying to be more competitive, as you can't beat a team event.

As the race got underway, myself, David Rigby and Joe Monk pulled away from the field fairly early, and with the wind behind us initially got off to a decent start. As we turned back in to the wind after about a quarter of a mile, I found myself moving to the front of the pack and for whatever reason remained there throughout the slog into the wind - I'm not sure whether that classes as naivity on my part for not sharing the load, or positive running for taking it on - but about 3 miles in it definitely felt like I'd been a bit naive! 😂

As we dipped down and around Fairhaven Lake at coming up to the 3 mile mark, myself and Dave started to put some distance between ourselves and Joe, who had done well to stick with the pace all the way into the wind. From there on in it was a tough fought 2 mile slog back to the finish line, with there only being a matter of strides between us all the way. I have to be honest, I felt absolutely awful from about 4 miles through to the end and was running on empty - the days off had seemingly taken a toll and my hamstrings were beginning to tighten up more and more.

Thankfully, I just about managed to hold out until the finish line, and the time of 25:23 was almost 30 seconds quicker than my previous best performance on the course, in difficult conditions.

In the team standings, Wesham men were beaten by Preston by 40 points, but with a couple of front end runners missing it was still a fantastic result to come away from the race with second place.

On Friday, I felt awful, my hamstrings were still ruined from the previous evenings race, but I managed to get out and run the 11.5 miles home from work at a nice and steady 6:30 pace. Then on Saturday, still feeling the effects somewhat, I had to cancel a planned track session with young Joe and instead did the Lytham Park run as a gentle session, running round in just under 16 and a half minutes.

I felt a bit better on Sunday and took myself a little bit further with my long run, getting 17.5 miles in at 6:15 pace. Hopefully I am over the periformas problems for a while again now and can get through the final targeted race of this current training block at Christleton 5k this coming Friday. I then have a rest week pencilled in before the start of my Berlin Marathon training later in the month.

Total mileage for the week: 52.5

Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:19

Total mileage so far this month (May): 128.5

Total mileage for 2017: 1308.5

Average miles per day 2017: 9.76