An odd month

March has been strange. I started the month feeling strong and eager to try to increase my weekly distance. However quite quickly I had knee pain and had to cut back on longer runs. On the physio's advice I have gradually increased the length of my runs back to a level close to that of February although I'm keeping the 'Long Run' a bit shorter and being fairly slow on descents.

 By undertaking some extra short runs and keeping close to a programme I achieved a good final distance and a sub-4 minute kilometre.

I know that my knee isn't right yet, I'm conscious of it fairly often, but it doesn't seem to be causing too much trouble at present. I'll have to see how it settles as we go into April.

Manufacturing ethics

Vegans are often aware of ethical purchasing issues but recently my wife has become more interested through a Lent study group. Almost everything we buy in Europe today has been manufactured in China where employment and human rights are poor. I took a quick look online and discovered that my recent show purchases could have been better researched.

From Ethical Consumer today

Quite why Brooks hit the bottom slot in this review is unclear as I'm not a subscriber (yet perhaps?).  A quick scan of the company's website shows quite a bit of policy documentation and another consumer website suggests that Brooks are one of the more ethical manufacturers, but perhaps that's out of date now?

Inov-8's policy is very weak by comparison and occupies just a single webpage screen. A climber's blog suggests that Inov-8 had a strong eco policy in 2006 but that might not extend to its personnel.

Say hello?

This post, more than others is especially trivial! Over the last few weeks I've developed a hypothesis that I'm more likely to get a response to saying hello to a runner if I don't have my trail running rucsac on. Do runners think that trail runners with extra gear are daft? Perhaps we are, what are we training for? The general topic of runners acknowledging each other has a couple of threads online and it might be that there is no need for runners to acknowledge each other; after all I don't speak to everyone I pass whilst walking into work.

A cheery Harley rider in Winnipeg

The topic reminded me of the perennial bikers' topic of 'Why don't Harley riders wave back?' which has a large number of threads with many hypotheses. In this domain there is also the issue of coolness of wave and even why bother?

I suspect that runners aren't formed too much into cliques, more that they either think frequent greetings are pointless or they are so focussed on the next few steps and current pace that they haven't really seen me go past...

Devil's Elbow path

Today's part in the ongoing rehab of the knee was to be 17km contributing to a week of up to 40km. I planned a slightly shortened version of my Balckamoor half-marathon  which saw me ascend the bridleway to 'Devil's Elbow' on Hathersage Road. I've tried going down it on a bicycle and found that frightening, running up was slow and hard work.

Strava shows that others have run it far faster than I did, indeed the record is amazing. I couldn't follow the footpath across the road and ended up adding a bit of distance to my circuit. During the descent to home I was very careful and walked a few bits in Limb valley to avoid overloading either knee. That was very wise as the total distance was over 18km and I was becoming aware of both knees by the time I was home. But that's OK and resulted in a week total of 45km which is more than I'd planned. Hopefully not too much!

Here's a movie of a descent of the Devil's Elbow path by someone far braver than me.

I also noted that the last two runs were in effect back-to-back so I've undertaken around 25km in the last 24 hours.

Back into neutral

Whilst walking to and from work, and moving around there, I had no hint of the right ITB pain. I decided to risk a short run in my unsupportive and very 'neutral' Green Silence shoes. After a very gentle descent to Millhouses park I made a bit of effort and achieved a PB.

I'm sure I could have gone faster as I was only making 'some' effort as I'm supposed to be in rehab. I returned home very gently especially as the last 1.5km is moderately uphill, it certainly feels more than the 60m shown on Strava!

Anyway, the key thing is that during this I had no hint of ITB pain from either knee. Does this mean that I've caused and cured a problem within a week? I'll find out tomorrow - it took 24 hours for my knees to 'collapse' earlier in the week.

Making matters worse?!

Now I have knee pain on the right as well as on the left, perhaps localised to the ITB area. At the circuit last night I couldn't do anything resembling a squat or lunge with either leg! Although I hoped the red shoes would provide some helpful support and cushioning during this rehab phase I wonder if they are making matters worse, as others have found. Ok, personal anecdotes are useless evidence but I think I'll try my next run in other shoes.

15km in the new shoes

Having managed 14km on Saturday, tonight I tried the 15km road route that I first ran a few weeks ago. I blame that run for some of the knee pain and therefore tonight I had to avoid a repeat occurrence. A key feature of this was to take the whole route at a very steady pace and to be especially cautious on descents. Often downhill sections are an opportunity to improve the average pace but they are also when loads are greatest on the quadriceps fibres and patellar tendons. Whilst some claim that running downhill trains (and another anecdotal report) the musculoskeletal system for future downhill sections, in Sheffield it could be possible to become overtrained by repetitive downhill runs.