I met with a very nice man called Hugh last week. He specialises in biomechanical analysis and he did all sorts of tests on me to work out why my knees are so rubbish. Although of course there is actually nothing wrong with my knees, but that’s where I feel the pain because of my ITB syndrome – caused by shortening of my ilio-tibial bands (who knew a band of fibrous tissue at the side of your thigh could be the source of such misery). The whole session was actually very interesting (if a little tiring) as he pinpointed the problems, and also showed me videos of myself running with my weird gait. He gave me some initial exercises to be getting on with and I’m meeting him again tonight to get a full program to follow – not just to help for the marathon (in fairness it’s a bit late for that) but also to ensure I can keep running after the marathon (if I survive, which is still in doubt).

After the session on Wednesday, I struggled to walk for about two days, mostly due to pain in my hips (I thought they were the only bits of me still working), but clearly this is where a lot of the problems lie. And what’s really interesting, is that I’ve just run today, and whilst it was a short one, I didn’t have any pain at all in my knees.

I am a little anxious about the training plan I’m getting tonight – quite frankly I’ve struggled with the initial warm up exercises he gave me on Wednesday to be getting on with. But hopefully this will put me on the road to better running.

And here is a very interesting picture for anyone who is still reading……….