Contingency plans

I was delighted to get up yesterday and feel like my foot was back to normal. I find that if it's good first thing on a morning that is the best sign. As the day wore on it felt a little bit niggly and I found myself wondering does it feel like it does when I'm being careful and gently coaching it back to full fitness, or does it feel like it's on a downward spiral and I need to be very cautious about what I do? It's a bit annoying as it isn't in pain and there is just the slightest niggle, so I am going to judge things day by day. I am now understanding why the podiatrist said he was amazed I had no comeback with it after Bangalore!!! I think I'm quite wise to it now though... there's nothing like previous misfortune to make you very judgemental at the slightest flicker of doubt!

This time of year is quite unlucky for me... 2009 I had bursitis and had to pull out of Stamford with the London marathon threatened, 2010 I got heat stroke and had to pull out of Marrakech marathon, 2011 I hurt my foot so bad it knocked me out of training for 12 weeks and I had to cancel 3 ultras. Doing the Bangalore ultra changed my misfortune and bad "run" of events, and now this happening with my foot will also not be an issue because I simply won't allow it. I will not be cancelling any ultras this year! What I may consider cancelling is Stamford 30K in a fortnight. I am only doing it for the training (because it's very hilly) and I will not be at all disappointed not to do it (although I will miss out on a good weekend with friends which will be the bummer!). The only reason this race is in doubt is because of the hills... hills can make my foot worse if it's not so good because of having to go up onto my toes on the uphill sections. Another option here however is to walk the hills... although this would defeat the whole object of the race. I'm not planning on running all of the hills, but I'd like to get through at least 3/4 of them!

I got a parcel today from Rat Race... after finding the backpack I had recently purchased wasn't big enough (the mandatory kit list for the race is quite extensive) I bought another one and got some Montane featherlight trousers as they were such a good price. The backpack (a Terra Nova Laser 20L Elite) is absolutely gorgeous. It's the thinnest, lightest thing I have ever seen. I'm looking forward to trying it out tomorrow. As a precaution I may chose to do 3:1 run/walk tomorrow (which is what I used to do when coming back from injury last year). I will see how things pan out! Like I said earlier though, it's quite frustrating because I don't feel injured. It may be a "better to be safe than sorry" situation for the next couple of weeks though. I do think it was bending my foot wrong in yoga though, because that's the only thing it could be!

Tonight I get to do my weighted step session. I always found step really really boring until I started the weighted version, but I enjoy this immensely. It's like the heavy weighted walking... I love to think of all of the strength I'm gaining by doing it and how much better my future races will be because of it. I like to work as hard as I can during training (although intervals will always kill me I reckon!).

I'm also back in the good old reliable Kinsei trainers! I ordered a 7.5 instead of a 7 (as the only reason the last two pairs felt uncomfortable was because they felt too small). I thought they had changed the design, but in actual fact realised I'd gone up in trainer size instead, so I'm back in those again. I did a 2 mile run in them on Wednesday and they felt great.

I now have the huge headache of trying to find a spare battery pack for my new headtorch. I can't find one anywhere, no matter where I look, and a spare battery is on the mandatory kit list for The Wall. God knows where I'm going to find one of those... but surely a torch as good as the R4 Hope Vision has a website where you can get spare stuff??? Answers on a postcard please...