Yoga For Runners

Wednesday 7th October, 2009

Competing in the Brussels marathon reminded me just how tough a marathon is.

Duh, I hear you cry, but to be honest, I think I had fallen in to a bit of a false sense of security, knowing that I'd run a marathon before had made me self-assured and cocky.

Monday's muscle tightness, sore knee and general fatigue quickly saw to that, and as well as concentrating on my diet and water intake, I decided to explore the benefits of yoga. Something had to loosen these damn muscles!

Running is a great workout for the heart and lungs, but breeds lower body strength and upper body instability because it works a certain set of muscles and has a limited range of motion, often leading to tightness and overworked joints.

That, according to my book, Run for Life, is where cross training, like yoga or swimming can come in. Yoga helps with balance, muscle stretching, breathing and flexibility. It also gets blood pumping around the body, aiding the healing of injuries and the meditative aspect is good for the mind.

With this in mind, I trotted off to the Yoga College of India.

If it's good enough for Jennifer Aniston, it's good enough for me!















Bikram Yoga is a series of 27 postures and two breathing exercises, which take place during a 90 minute class held in a room heated to around 36 degrees C. To me - the lay-person - most of the exercises seemed to be advanced stretches, and there were some incredibly flexible people in my class!

Some of the poses were difficult to bend in to, but I managed to have a go at each one and the instructor was very helpful, highlighting the benefits of each move.

Afterwards I felt great: relaxed and well stretched. I will definitely be going again as the NYC Marathon draws ever nearer.

Four Weeks To Go - Riddled With Injury

29th September, 2009

This week has been fairly depressing.

After the joy of the new trainers passed I somehow managed to injure my knee. Last week's short runs were all cut short by a nagging pain around the bottom and outside of my left knee cap.











I had to give up after 3 miles on Wednesday and then - perhaps stupidly - opted to go out again on Thursday and couldn't make it any further than about a mile and a half. Turning home I felt really, really dejected. I wondered if I hadn't stretched enough after my 10 mile run last Tuesday.

After resting for a few days (Friday and Saturday) I tried to go out for a long run on Sunday afternoon with my friend and running buddy, Natalia. Setting off in the Bois de la Cambre, we tracked down in to the woods - all was going well, but after about seven miles, we ran down a sharp slope and the knee pain came back. I tried to push on through the pain and keep going but eventually had to stop and we walked for a mile before trying to start running again. It was no use as the pain continued to get worse and after another mile or so we had to stop and walk the rest of the way home.

I felt very dejected as I've never experienced anything like this before.

Getting in to a negative mindset is awful. I began to worry that I won't be fit enough for New York. I really started to beat myself up about not stretching enough, not putting in enough miles or getting enough sleep and finally I started to think I haven't been taking the training seriously enough, perhaps the knowledge that I've already run a marathon has made me a bit complacent about training for the next one.












Work took me and my foul mood to the Swedish city, Goteborg, where I had a lot of time to think on my strategy going forward. The most important thing for me at this point is to be able to get around the marathon course in New York, preferably running the whole way. Using my best Swedish, I bought some ibuprofen and some ibuprofen gel for the knee and did a few stretches.














Through a friend, I managed to find a drop in physioclinic in Gotenburg. http://www.sportrehab.se/

After a good deal of prodding around and "provoking" me, the physio, diagnosed an "overuse" injury inside the joint.

If you over-exercise your knee you can aggravate the cartilage and another layer called the meniscus, which cushion the impact when you run.

At best, the area becomes inflamed and at worst it can begin to tear away from the joint. He didn't seem to think that mine wasn't torn (I would be in a lot more pain if it were) just inflamed.

The good news is that it isn't a problem with the knee cap or the muscles surrounding the knee or the tendons, as these kind of problems are more serious. He seemed confident it would heal, but said the meniscus area has bad blood supply and therefore takes - on average - longer to heal.

The anti-inflammatory gel wouldn't work, he said, because the aggravation is inside the joint, too deep to be reached with gel. So the bad news is he was VERY evasive about how long it would take and said I should "reassess" my plans to run the marathon and "throw my training schedule out of the window."

Me: "Yes but I am running a marathon in 4.5 weeks, I need to train."

Physio: "Well, you rest now, you may be ok for the marathon, you train hard now, maybe your knee problem comes back and you have to run the last 10k of the marathon in pain, you do yourself a great deal of damage, you get in to a vicious cycle."

And so I left with a downbeat feeling, some anti inflamatory drugs and a recommendation to rest before starting low level exercise like biking or walk-run-walk.

I am to take Voltaren for 10 days - which contains 25mg of diclofenac (picture below). It is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory which could cause "severe stomach pain" according to the physio - YUM!