Also, in light of the latest advice, I’ve decided to scrap my old warm-up routine for a new one. Instead of doing fifteen minutes of static stretches (which involves moving the muscles beyond their natural range of movement to increase their elasticity), I’m doing more dynamic stretches, which helps lubricate the joints and warm-up the muscles better.

Dynamic stretches encourages more blood flow to the muscles, which means greater delivery of oxygen and improved flushing away of waste products from exercise (like lactic acid). That’s then followed by a five-minute jog to my usual starting point, where I start as normal.

Earlier this week I decided to visit a physiotherapist. The deep muscle massage seemed to help relieve some of the pain in my muscle, but it did make it sore the next day. That was probably because I have deliberately rested it much as possible for the last eight weeks (on doctors’ orders). Now it seems to be healing and this has given me extra confidence that this is the beginnings of a permanent recovery.

As I said at the beginning, there is no way I can complete my original training plan and I probably won’t have time to build up to the half-marathon distance either, but I hope to get up to around ten miles before the race. The rest I’m sure will come on the day. Whatever state I’m in, I’ll still run it and enjoy it. The PB will have to wait until next year.

Being injured and attempting to train whilst recovering is so frustrating! Hopefully everything will have settled down again by the time of my next training run, so I can continue. This stop-start business with this injury and recovery is starting to knock my confidence that I will ever get back to where I was six months ago.

As ever, I was anxious about returning to running again, however, this time everything just felt normal. No unusually aching muscles or any pain. Which made a nice change from what I’ve put up with for the last six weeks.

So I now I’m going to properly ease myself back into training and actually start following a training schedule again. It’s very mild compared to what I’m used to, but there’s no way I’m going to risk another six weeks of not being able to train.

I think that decision has paid off. I did a 2-mile “trial run” on Sunday and felt much better. There was the occasional twinge from my original injury (a pulled muscle) initially, but once I got going, it disappeared.

So on Monday I decided to restart my training for the Great North Run 2009. I’m using a deliberately slow, easy training program in order to gradually build up my strength again – I’m definitely not going to risk letting this injury happen again.

Whilst training for Paris, I noticed a twinge around my knee. I ignored it until after the race, then treated it by doing some special targeted stretches for two weeks. However, after the first week of intensive training again, this old injury returned, but this time it was much worse. With a week to go before my Yorkshire Three Peaks attempt, I decided to rest for that week and use it as an informal taper week.

That Three Peaks attempt has since put paid to any hopes of running in the next few weeks. I must have pulled a muscle or something similar whilst scrambling down Ingleborough, which I didn’t really notice at the time, but now it hurts whenever I walk for longer than fifteen minutes. It would be impossible (and foolish) to do any running in this condition, so until I can get this problem resolved, there will be no running for now.

All of this has left me tremendously demotivated. I definitely won’t be able to break my 10K PB in the Leeds 10K (in three weeks) and the length of time my recovery needs may seriously jeopardise my plans for PBs in the Great North Run and the Dublin Marathon in October.

So this week I’m starting my full training schedule. I’ve also decided, following my performance at the Paris Marathon, to use the non-linear periodisation system again. Hopefully I’ll be able to smash my marathon PB by running the Dublin Marathon in 4h30m00s – that’s my goal anyway.

Friday’s schedule called for 5 miles easy with 6 x 30 second fartlek intervals. The first time I saw what mileage I had to cover, I thought it sounded like a big ask. I’ve still got memories of how tiring this session used to be, especially with the fartlek intervals, which really knackered me out.

However, once I got out there I discovered I didn’t really need to put in any extra effort into running the five miles (except for running around the headland – the wind was quite strong and was a struggle to run against sometimes). What really pleasantly surprised me though was my peformance during the fartlek intervals.

The last time I regularly did this kind of session, I looked upon intervals with some trepidation because after each interval I was always exhausted. This time though I managed to breeze through them. I was even able to increase my pace in each progressive interval, which was something I definitely couldn’t have done last time. Previously I would start out running each interval really fast and then slow down through tiredness in each following interval.

So after the first week back to “normal” training, I’m generally quite impressed with my state of fitness. As usual, I seem to have underestimated my ability again, as I appear to be fitter than I give myself credit for. Using this training plan to train for Paris seems to have really boosted my general levels of fitness, aerobic endurance and stamina. Not bad!

I’ve been in near-continuous training for nearly eighteen months now, with the odd few weeks resting here and there after each marathon. So after Paris I wanted to really relax and recover and not actually train for anything. I’m not saying I don’t want to go running anymore – I just didn’t want to start training for another event so soon.

Unfortunately my Three Peaks attempt has put paid to that somewhat. It’s only four weeks away and requires it’s own level of training (walking the equivalent of a marathon over three of Yorkshire’s highest peaks). However, I’ve already committed to it and I don’t intend to renege on this promise.

If I started training for Dublin now, that would give me (roughly) six months to train. Considering that I’ve run several marathons before I think this is more than enough time for me. In fact, I’m even willing to gamble and not start marathon training until the end of May. Training for the Leeds 10K (on June 21st) will be in full swing by then anyway, so I hope I’ll be more rested and be back into that competitive running frame of mind by then.

The Three Peaks involves climbing some 4,000m of ascent over Yorkshire’s three highest peaks: Pen-Y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough (usually in that order), which in total is approximately 25 miles. The challenge which has been laid down to me is to complete all three within twelve hours.

Now I consider myself fitter than I have been at this point in time, but this is a totally different kettle of fish from running. I’ll be walking it – definitely not running – and there’s the fact that the route climbs three mountains and the temperamental weather that can bring. So this is no small ask.

Unfortunately, trying to ease myself into training hasn’t come very easy, even though I’m only running a very easy distance (three miles, three times a week). An injury from before Paris needs resting and I wanted to spend more time resting after Paris, so I’m finding it difficult to motivate myself and get myself back into the training state of mind.

So this week is about continuing to taper and about carbo-loading until the big day itself.

My training got off to a tiring start on Tuesday when I ran one mile easy, followed by two miles at my fastest pace, another two at moderate pace and then a final mile at easy pace.

The fast miles were tough and very tiring, as my legs felt remarkably stiff and heavy and took a long time to warm up. Then my MP3 player crashed in the middle of one of my favourite running songs, which was helping me push on through the pain. So I had to stop and fix that, which interrupted my rhythm and which really annoyed me.

By the end of that run I was really tired – I had probably over-exerted myself if I’m honest. So I was glad my next two runs are fairly easy runs at a steady pace.

On Wednesday, I did four miles, with five “strides” – which basically means running at a fast pace for thirty seconds at different points during the route. I felt a little bit more flexible, but still heavy and weighed down by all these carbohydrate stores I’m building up.

Even though I’m running fewer miles now than at any time during the last four months, it doesn’t deel easier at all – in fact it feels like a bit of a drag to get going and slip into a steady pace.

It felt just like that again on Thursday when I ran one mile easy followed by one and a half miles at moderate pace, followed by another mile easy. The moderate lap was really tough because, once again, my legs felt like lead.

Still I managed to finish the last training session for this marathon in a respectable time, slightly faster than I predicted.

So that is the end of training. No more sessions before the big day. I can only hope it all pays off on the day. Wish me luck!