Training runs with A and mid-week to-work runs continued apace, occassionally coming foul of bad knee pain but nothing too long-lasting. Final 10miles around the S London 3 commons ended prematurely at Balham with a knee ache and a sulky bus ride home.

Week preceeding White Peaks was spent in Volos, central Greece where most of the training runs were  treking back and forth the long harbour and spur along the harbour breaker wall and around the beachside restaurants with the stray dogs! Got a bit teadious but did manage to get an 8mile tempo run it at mostly sub-8min miles and felt good. Last run was in the mountains, very hot and only saw a cyclist who winked at me on the way past :D

White Peaks

Did manage to get onto the half, and A was a star. She struggled a bit mid way, and I hated the long endless downhills (as did my quands and knees) but managed to get in a 1:55:24, which was pretty low in the rankings and race leader won in 1:15! Could have gone about 10mins faster but determined to get A in under 2hrs so was completely fantastic! Absolutely goregous scenery, great marshalling, post race facilities were fine, but overall didn’t like the monotony of the flatness and then single long dowhills.

[http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/5802416]

Post race, iced the knee in the pub all afternoon and although was a bit achy was fine the next day. Landlady at the B& B in Stanton-Lees was crazy but whole weekend was really wonderful.

Since race in mid-May, haven’t run at all as wanting to start over with POSE technique which entails reading book, watching DVD and starting drills. Have read half of book and started on drills but very tempted to take old running shoes to Kythera tonight so as to enjoy the gorgeous trails around the mountains and olive groves…

Did however cycle nearly 70miles for the CARA cycle challenge, which was interesting if not exhausting. Interesting insight into mental (but not physical) fatigue and ebbing away of stamina. Wondered if that was what 7hrs of running would feel a bit like from an emotional point of view. Or would knackered legs hurt too much to notice?!

Have seen orthopaedic consultant at Guys who is thinking that its tendonitis in the knee but the xray shows nothing out of the ordinary. Am now awaiting for an MRI scan for further analysis.

Would very much like to run the Harvest Trail 10miles in Herts, 21st Sept, hope POSE will see me through?!

Also http://www.runthemoose.com/ looks great and hopefully KD will be a team mate!