Our articles are not designed to replace medical advice. If you have an injury we recommend seeing a qualified health professional. To book an appointment with Tom Goom (AKA ‘The Running Physio’) visit our clinic page. We offer both in-person assessments and online consultations.
Carla is a runner and devoted fundraiser for the British Heart Foundation. You can follow her on Twitter via @carlawalakoala. She’s kindly agreed to share her marathon story with us and tell us a bit about “the stick”…
I am currently training for my first marathon. This is something I thought I would never do for two reasons: 1) I didn’t think I could give it the time and training it required (if I commit to anything I do it properly and see it out until the end). And 2) I didn’t think my body would be able to hack it.
Several half marathons and a lot of cajoling from my running club friends later (plus watching the London marathon from the sidelines and thinking I want a piece of that action), I find myself signed up to do the London Marathon. I didn’t just sign up through the ballot either. I got myself a guaranteed entry through the British Heart Foundation. I wasn’t going to do it for any old charity so if I didn’t get a place through them or the ballot, I wasn’t going to do it at all. That sounds extreme but I wanted to do this for more than just personal gain. My Dad died of heart failure on Christmas day 2010 and my aim is to raise as much money for The British Heart foundation as possible to try to prevent even just one family from going through the same thing. Another really great reason to stay motivated through the hard marathon training.
‘No backing out now’ I thought to myself as the letter came through my door confirming that I had a place, and started trawling through the internet and talking to my friends to get the most suitable training plan for me. Well, I say most suitable…. when I said I don’t do things by halves, I wasn’t kidding. I chose to do the Hal Higdon Advanced 2 marathon training plan. I decided (like with everything else) if I am going to follow a training plan and put all of that effort in, I was going to do it properly. The introduction to this training plan said: ‘Welcome to my most difficult training program’. My initial inner thoughts were ‘EEEK!’ and then my usual stubborn self came out and said ‘of course you can do this, what are you worrying about??!’ So I embarked on this super tough program.
The basis of the plan was to train six days a week with one day rest and these six days would consist of one tempo run, one interval run or hill training session, one long run and one pace run and then two average paced fairly short distance runs. Right from the start, I decided to take one of these average paced short distance runs out and put in a strength training session in the form of ‘no more trouble zones’ and exercise DVD by Jillian Michaels (the personal trainer from ‘The Biggest Loser US’) because I felt that this would be more beneficial to me since it has loads of strengthening and core work in.
The first few weeks went fine, since I had already built my regular long run-up to 15 miles. Then I was struck down with Achilles tendonitis in my right leg. I decided at this point it was a good time to invest in a foam roller and take time off until it was better. I rolled and rolled and rolled until I was blue in the face and took anti-inflammatories alongside this and eventually I managed to rid myself of my creaky tendonitis but I still felt quite tight in my calves.
Then one day, I had gone to see one of my running club friends and he showed me ‘THE STICK’ and told me to try it. I was a bit dubious to start off with because us runners seem to have a habit of buying any new gadget on the market if there was any chance it might help us get a PB and the fact that it looked like a long stick, with handlebar grips at either end and little round tubes that rotate independently of the central stick meant that I felt it couldn’t possibly work.
As soon as I rolled it over my extremely tight calves, I was sold straight away. Unfortunately, my bank balance did not agree with me buying yet another running gadget so I had to wait. I researched a lot of cheaper alternatives but held out for a while. Then (after completing the Brighton half marathon with a PB, on top of several weeks of marathon training) another friend from the club piped up and said he had a spare and would sell it to me at a reduced cost. SOLD! To the lady who felt like her legs were about to give up the ghost on her and she’d never be able to complete a marathon, never mind in a respectable time.
I picked my stick up at an event and couldn’t wait until I got home. I started rolling my quads out straight away (much to the amusement of my fellow running club friends). The relief was instant. When I got home I gave the rest of my legs a going over. Any pain I had been experiencing before was gone! That is not to say that rolling this thing over my extremely sore and tight muscles didn’t hurt. When done properly, the pain is immense. It gets to all of the places the foam roller just can’t and boy does it cause agony! But it is all worth it now. The pain has gone and I am ready to embark on an intense interval session tomorrow night and a 19 mile run on Saturday. Maybe I can do this marathon after all? I hope come marathon day I can really perform well and do my Dad proud.
If you’d like to donate to help Carla’s fundraising for the British Heart Foundation you can do through her justgiving page. Many thanks!
