My knees receive temporary reprieve.

Having had no luck in getting an NHS physiotherapist quickly, I went private. I can search all I like for good physios, but I’m no expert, and they’re no expert at the Internets (my emails were dropped on the floor). So I decided to go to people who know better; I went to Achilles Heel on Great Western Road to ask if they could recommend any. They did — they recommended the one they have in-store. Before I knew it, I was signed up for a physio appointment. So yesterday morning I stuck to my appointment to see what she’d say.

She figured the issue on my left knee is bursitis, which actually I had on my left hip last year. So maybe this is a hangover from that, something that either I didn’t correct, or something about my gait that I developed while recovering from things last summer. Last year’s bursitis was way more painful (on a day to day basis, not just when running).

After lots of prodding, bending, poking, lying, sitting, standing, walking, hopping, and stretching, yesterday’s physio figured that a couple of muscles on my left leg aren’t as well-developed as on the right leg, and/or are pretty tense from all the running. So I’ve got a whole new bundle of stretches to try and loosen that off, which will hopefully resolve the root cause of all this.

Fortunately, this is all fairly mild. I’m hoping these stretches help things out, and I can get back on with things by the end of the week.My indicator of progress is being able to run 5km in 25 minutes again; I was exactly 4 minutes 5 seconds ahead of that speed only three weeks ago, but might as well build back up fairly easily!

This little hitch probably rules out Edinburgh marathon. But maybe I’ll offset my marathon schedule by a couple of weeks. There are some marathons in Australia in June, and since I’m aiming to be on that particular continent around then, maybe that’s my actual target…