So as I write this , it is 26 days until Race to the King.  26 days until I lace up my trainers, and alongside my good friend Freestone, start to run/walk/trudge/shuffle my way along 53 miles of the South Downs Way.

I have been doing a fair amount of training.  Concentrating on a double run every weekend (either a shorter run followed by a long one, or the other way round) I am training my body to run on tired legs.  I have made sure to train on the South Downs as much as possible, to simulate the conditions on race day.  I have even been out running in the midday heat.

All of this is well and good, but I do seem to have developed a bit of an injury.  It was
inevitable.  I have no running pedigree.  No years of running experience to fall back on.  I have only really run any endurance type stuff for the last 4 years, and only regularly trained on long runs in the last 6 months.  The injury I have is an overuse injury of some
description.  The pain is in the area highlighted in the photo on the right.  I have consulted the good old internet doctor and think it might be a metatarsal stress fracture.  This seems the most likely option anyway.

Now the injury only hurts me once I have run for more than 2-3 hours, but consistently at around this mark it kicks in and hurts like hell. I will likely be running for around 14 hours at the Race to the King, meaning that I will have to run in pain for at least 11 hours.  This is going to be a bit tricky to say the least.

I now need to decide what to do.  I could just ignore it and keep going.  I could rest and avoid all running for a couple of weeks and see where I am.  What I really should do is go and see a physio, so I think this is what I will actually do.

Am worried that they will tell me no running, and that really I should not be doing the race.  I am doing the race regardless, so my thinking is that going to see the physio can do no harm and might actually do me a bit of good.

You never know, they might just give me a magic pill that not only sorts my foot out, but also turns me into the best ultra-runner the world has ever seen.

Stranger things have happened.

TTFN

Snooky