Still in one piece and with 8 weeks to go it would seem that the ankle is settling down. I put this down to the treatment Mel has given me plus the additional calf stretches. Whatever the reason is….I'm glad it's going away. With all the long runs I do seem to have developed a line of blisters underneath my toes. Quite painful but it isn't going to stop me from getting out there. Otherwise things are going very well.

I’ve been racing Thames Turbo races since 2003 and my previous best was 59.41. This was set on a faster course as since then the transition has moved to the grass. They reckon it’s worth 40-50s. So I reckon I was nearly 1m40s faster than I’ve ever gone before.

Click here for the 2003 results

Click here for the 2006 results

The main area of improvement has been on the bike which feels much more powerful at the moment. I believe this is down to my improved core strength.Mel worked on my upper body today. We both still believe that there’s swim improvements to be had if I sort out my shoulders. We’re going to do an upper body analysis with the other Kinesis physios in the next month or so.

In the meantime I’ll continue to work on the core exercises with the gym ball and the arm exercises Mel gave me last week.

My personal best is 2hrs 47 and the championship benchmark is 2hrs 45. So my goal was to run a sub 2.45 marathon. I ddn’t, so that’s why I’m disappointed.

So where did it all go wrong? If you’ve been following my physio diary you’ll notice I picked up a knee injury about 6 weeks out from the marathon. The last 6 weeks are a key period but my physio advised me to severely limit the amount of time I spent running in order to avoid further injury. So basically I only really managed to run at the weekends for the last 4 weeks of the marathon build up. I’d done all the hard work in Dec, Jan, Feb but was hoping to put the cherry on the cake with a few big weeks towards the back end of March.

The race itself went fairly well with the following mile splits

1 – 5.50
2 – 6.05
3 – 5.44
4 – 6.03
5 – 5.59
6 – 6.16
7 – 6.21
8 – 6.11
9 – 6.07
10 – 6.22
11 – 6.13
12 – 6.12
13 – 6.23
14 – 6.18
15 – 6.22
16 – 6.15
17 – 6.27
18 – 6.28
19 – 6.30
20 – 6.37
21 – 6.52
22 – 7.00
23 – 7.12
24 – 7.09
25 – 7.45
26 – 7.30
26.2 2hrs49m 49s

I reported back with an update on how the exercises have been going. Every morning and every evening I’ve been doing my pelvic floor exercises and I’m definitely getting stronger. Today Mel taught me another core type exercise aimed specifically at the gluteus medius. Mel always tries to put things in plain English and described the action to be somewhat similar to a dog cocking it’s leg. The only differences would be I wouldn’t be stood up and I certainly wouldn’t be releasing any fluids! So whilst on the floor on my side, with legs slightly bent I just have to lift the top leg up only about 20 inches off the ground. This should be repeated for as many times as possible and then again with the other leg.

Sounds easy enough……but I’ve got to keep up the pelvic floor exercises too.

Now I always thought that core stength could be improved by doing a few situps and gym ball exercises. It would appear it’s much more subtle than this. The first exercise is targetting the pelvic floor muscle and involves doing the following:

1. Lying on your back with knees bent.
2. Breathing in deeply
3. Bringing the left leg up towards the chest whilst, uhem….”trying to move your willy” or “preventing yourself from peeing”
4. Breath out and repeat nine more times
5. Do 1 to 4 with right leg

So off I go.

Kinesis are primarily a company dedicated to physiotherapy and operate out of the Acorn centre in Twickenham, London. The three women and a bloke are all body experts and really seem to know what they’re talking about. As of the 1st of April Kinesis have volunteered to help me become a better triathlete through physio and a bespoke strength and flexibilty training schedule.

The 1st session with them was aimed at assessing my lower body. The upper body is going to be analysed at a later date. As I mentioned earlier they made me stand around in my underpants and for quite a considerable period of time I might add. I’m glad I was careful dressing today!! I was also to perform a number of simple exercises that would give them an insight into what made this elite runner, Ironman and GB age group triathlete tick.

Some simple observations quickly assertained that :

1. I’m not very flexible
2. My right leg is longer than the left
3. My core strength is terrible
4. My back is slightly twisted (ok I said it was a lower body analysis…but they couldn’t resist pointing out that my spine does appear to have a kink in it)
5. It’s a miracle I can run so fast with the above
6. I do have a hamstring insertion problem and some mild tendonitus
7. I have weak Gluteus Medius
8. My left side is weaker than the right

So all things considered I’m a tip top thorough bred racing machine!

Having done the lower body assessment I asked why they hadn’t done the upper body as part of the same assessment. Apparantly that’s another world of problems! They likened the whole process to the layers of an onion. We are going to start with the inner / core layers first and work outwards. So the first set of exercises are going to be core. The 1st exercise prescription will come tomorrow.
After the analysis I was given a very nice one hour massage by Helen Gordon. It turns out that Helen used to be an elite triathlete so it was interesting to pick her brains and it was amazing how many people we both knew. She was racing in the late 1990s and there’s so many people still kicking about. Unfortunately Helen’s tri exploits were put to an end by an injury.