Traditionally, at this time of year, I’m not running much. In January 2015, I only managed 18 miles after somehow contriving to injure my knee during a gentle 10 mile run with my running club. In January 2016, I hit the heady heights of 38 miles, after falling on the coastal path and contriving to convert a dead leg into a knee injury.

In actual fact, both injuries were more or less caused by the same thing: in 2015, I was trying to come back and stack too many miles back in too soon after a lay-off due to a cold. I’d barely ran in two weeks, and then ran 13 miles in two days. It was a bad idea. In 2016, I probably ran too much too soon after getting a dead leg, and put undue stress on my knee. So, yeah, I have something of a history of impatience. In 2015, I didn’t get running properly until around May, while in 2016, it was April.

Which has left me a little nervous at the moment: after running 122 miles in December, January was pretty stop-start. Twenty miles the first week, then a cold limited me to 6 the week after. Then I was right back up to 30, before another cold put me out for the better part of two weeks.

Rocking my cow cowl through the puddles at parkrun

I started running again yesterday, at parkrun, and managed a reasonably sedate pace through the puddles. Normally, I try to run-commute to parkrun, but this week I wanted to keep the mileage down, so drove. Today, I headed out for a gentle six miles around the route of one of our club’s race routes (next weekend; sign up here!)

I always find it difficult coming back from an injury or illness. All the advice says to drop your mileage and then gradually build it back up again. But there is very little guidance on how much to drop your mileage – if I normally run 30 miles a week, it would be pretty unreasonable to come back with just 10 miles per week, but clearly coming straight back at 30 isn’t a good idea either. In consultation with my physio, we reckon 20 miles should be about right this coming week, and then build sensibly from there.

Hopefully this year I can manage to avoid serious injury…