Things I should know never to do: make statements such as, “Yes, the marathon training is going well!” and, “I’ve never had any problems with my knees, not ever!”
That’ll teach me to tempt fate. I spent the whole of last week hobbling around with a swollen knee. Going down tube station stairs with a straight leg is really quite tricky – sorry, angry commuters of London, tutting away at me. Nothing major, but really not ideal timing when last week should have seen my peak mileage and culminated in a 23-mile run. Instead, the only training I did was practising my best carb-loading. Fortunately I was back to a gentle jog yesterday, after tentatively testing it out at Junior parkrun in the morning. I’m hoping I can get back more or less to normal this week, not least because otherwise, London might run out of toast, biscuits and cake.
On the plus side, I’ve done lots of helpful research for my future PhD: “The use of frozen vegetables in minimising swelling in running injuries: a comparitive study of different veg/supermarket brands”. Preliminary findings suggest frozen petit pois from Sainsbury’s to be the best (good large packet size for coverage, nice small peas for excellent moulding). I also heard a great story from my physio about a lady who came to see him with what turned out to be, essentially, a stubbed toe. He told her to go and put some frozen peas on it. An hour later, the receptionist called him to say this lady was on the phone, “in a right state”, demanding to speak to him immediately. “That’s strange,” he thought. “Such a minor injury, what can be the problem?” but he picks up the phone. “I’m in the supermarket,” sobs the lady. “They haven’t got any frozen peas! Will sweetcorn do?”
So, share your top frozen-vegetable related tips and stories below the line – as well as your weekend exploits. Just don’t eat the peas that have been defrosted and refrosted about 345 times.
