So I went out late for a quick run around Rivington concerned that every time I do so my left calf/ankle gets really sore. So I walked to Rivington School car park as my warm up runs to here is what I thought normally causes it. So I walked and stretched out my legs and off I went.

Less then a mile at the reservoir my ankle was hurting again. AAARRGGHH FRUSTRATION! So at this point I started to really think. What is causing this? Could it be my technique? Well I realised that the ball if my foot was hitting the ground really hard rather than being a cushioned smooth flow. I realised that I wasn’t using the back of heel of my foot. So I started doing so, think that I had no idea if this would work.

At this point I left the fell running paths (after getting lost again) where I love running on the muddy soil which normally cushions my running which massively helps and all I had was concrete road. Here a huge alsatian went for me!! The owner had it on a retractable lead and didn’t have it secured and the dog was inches from reaching me. I screamed out “WWWOOOOWWWW CONTROL YOUR DOG!!”

After thinking about just surviving this and carrying on with my running technique I realised, my pain wasn’t getting any worse. It was actually helping! Here I kicked into a decent 7.5mph run for the final mile home.

So now I thought at last! I can finally concentrate on longer runs where my ankle has been thwarting me. I’m now getting really ambitious about doing 10Ks in 45 mins – which works out at 8.2mph for over 6 miles. Need to push now!

Watch this space.