There's been a bit of a gap since I last wrote. That's not to say I haven't done some lovely running; I did an 8.5 mile slow run over to Canary Wharf to go do a #Psycle spin class two weeks ago, followed by a long run on the Sunday... ...and that's when things started to go wrong.

On the Sunday run, we left with the Chasers to do approximately 15 miles, leading Wandsworth Town, along the Thames path, and turning around with a short, medium or long loop of Richmond park.

As we set off, I was enjoying it - I had been unwell for a week previously so took some time off, but soon got into the groove and felt comfortable enough. I was pushing 8.30 a mile and my feet felt comfy (weirdly, if I haven't been running enough, I feel it in my feet.).

I'd been a bit confident, and done 3 1/2 miles to each the start of the long run. 8 miles into the longer run was actually 11 1/2 miles for me.. oops. I just felt loose - that I just wanted to stop, and my right leg was tightening up on the ITB, causing pain on the outside of my right knee.

I soldiered on for another 1/2 a mile, but decided to call it a day to prevent injury. I arranged a video appointment with my GP and he put me in touch with a physio from Nuffield Health. After a phone consultation (getting me to do funky exercises over the phone and describe where the pain was) they gave me a load of exercises to do in order to loosen the ITB, and told me to leave it a week before running on it again. Evidently once the ITB is tight it pulls the rest of your leg out of alignment, unless you loosen it before running again the misalignment gets accentuated and you just make the problem worse.

With the exercises being done twice a day as prescribed, I decided it'd be worth getting back on my bike and cycling to work. This is where I managed to get my latest injury. On day 2 of cycling in, I went to unclip on my left foot and managed to fail; on my second attempt the foot came out - but but this point I'd strained my ankle slightly. I've done this when I first started cycling, so I put it down to a short break in cycling and not having the strength in the leg, nor the right unclipping angles...

I then decided that I'd done enough rest for the ITB and enjoyed one of the nicest commutes I'd ever done by running to work with KJ on Wednesday morning.  Unfortunately I think with my slightly weakened ankle from the unclip fail, I aggravated the problem.  Come Friday afternoon my ankle was starting to swell up and I was starting to feel sad.

Ah well, Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation to the rescue.  It's been 48 hours and although it's definitely not 'fixed' - the swelling is down and I'm hoping I'll be fit and ready to start cycling by next week (although with drastically loosened pedals) and running in two.