Gold Coast Marathon 2011 - Preparation

My road to the Gold Coast Marathon...

Preparation:
Usually, one should have at least 12 weeks of training to get in shape for a marathon. As for me, I have less than 7 weeks to recover/prepare after my Great Ocean Road Marathon ("GOR") in May. As you may recall, both of my knees went through a lot of suffering from the GOR. My plan was to not do any running for 2 weeks and then get back into it from week 3... sigh... plan only...

During the 2 weeks after GOR, I was stretching and massaging my legs every night (well, almost every night...) to relieve the tightness of the muscles that hold the knees, mainly my Iliotibial Band ("ITB")... I rented an exercise bike for a month as that I can jump on it as much as I can to work those legs... I also sought professional help and went for acupuncture and physiotherapy... Who says running is cheap!!! I had easily spent a few hundred bucks trying to get back in shape...

5 weeks have come and gone... my left knee has more or less recovered... However, my right knee is still no good... every time I feel 90% alright and went for a run, my right knee gave up usually after 15mins and I was back to 50%... it was quite demoralising... then I came across this quote that was given to me by my colleague (thanks Jaz!!!)... Dr George Sheenan: "The answers to the big questions in running is the same as the answers to the big questions in life: Do the best with what you have got."... time to reassess my plan...

After speaking to my brother, we concluded that the best strategy now is to concentrate doing core exercise to strengthen my form, swimming and cycling so that I can still have cardio workouts... hopefully these will still keep me in relative good shape while I wait for my knee to recover...

So that was it... my training plan requires me to do at least 30km per week... Guess what, I have only done 30km over this period of time... and I am supposed to do Gold Coast Marathon??? hmmm...