Still complaining

Not raced since Snowdon - injury is stopping me from stretching out, more about that later.

It has been a piss poor year for me on the racing front, I normally get about 30-35 races in a year- this year I have done 13. Its is the racing that I enjoy most, meeting up with friends that you only see at race meets and that special moment  you always get in a race when your half way up/down a fell side and you look up to see the amazing view and the feeling of great well-being.

I had an entry for Ben Nevis but it was too much of a risk in case I made the injury worse. I was gutted not to go and to be honest I have not read any other blogs if it had the words "Ben Nevis" in the title, pathetic I know, but it is so painful when you have badly wanted to do a race and not been able because of injury.

The year started and I had high hopes of improving my times, concentrating more on speed rather then endurance. I felt like I had a good winters training leading up to February and at the Pennine Relays I don't think I had ever felt so fit.
Since February though I seemed to have been through a rotation of injured -getting fit -injured again.
When I was free from injury I was really enjoying going to the local tri clubs speed sessions and I felt I was improving and beginning to look forward to the Autumn road racing season, but I have not been able to attend them for about 6 weeks now. If I do any road racing at all this year it will to try and build up my speed for next year.

So the injury or should I say injuries. Two. First one was like a torn stomach muscle that really hurt if I did anything that involved me tightening my stomach muscles. Still sore but 80% better.

The second one is a bit more complicated for me to explain. I'm fine if I jog slowly and take very small steps but as soon as I try and stretch out my legs to pick up a bit of speed my left calf, hamstring, groin and buttock goes really tight and sore. The good thing is that its not stopping me from running up hills, very slowly, so slow that some of my fell running mates would question if it is running at all. Even roadie Stevie A , who I ran up Blencathra with last week last week thought it was ridiculously easy.

So not all bad I know at least I can still plod away, but after 6 weeks I would of hoped it would be better by now.
One thing I have been doing is instead of running up a fell side as fast as possible and then running back down again, I have taken a bit more time on the tops enjoying the views..... which aint a bad thing.

Some photos below from the last 6 weeks plods.

I enjoyed watching the Lakeland 50/100 mile race

My kids took great delight in beating me up Blencathra

Haweswater with Kidsty Pike

Hope it was on a training exercise

Climbing Great Mell Fell

Sun going down on Blencathra

Haweswater

Survey Post

From Catstycam

High Pike

Blencathra Ridges