Thursday/Friday

Managed to stay up until 9pm the previous day which was a good effort. Woke up this morning at 6am, not a bad first day post travel.

Tried another light run and still very painful in the left knee dept. Action was required. I phoned a local sports clinic and manage to get a sports massage at 11am on the Friday. That's cutting it fine but I have to keep trying to get the knee fixed as to run the marathon in this state would be slow torture.

The next day I had the massage and made sure he went in deep. He concentrated on the inside of my left quad and all along the ITB. Very painful (as is the norm), though he wasn't as brutal as in Sydney. Elbows in the quads would fix the problem was my mantra. Anyway, he told me to do a light run in the evening and then I would rest up until the marathon on Sunday.

Despite the massaged areas being very sore, the test run in the evening went very well. Knee pain had virtually disappeared. This was a huge relief. The quads were still mighty sore but I still had a day and a half to recover. This gave me a huge lift. Thanks to James - if I'm ever back in Norwich I will definitely be back for more.