The (stupid) Appendix

The stupid appendix. A completely redundant body part that has no discernible use in the human body....... apart from getting infected 9 weeks before my spring marathon.


On Thursday of last week I actually cut my run short by a mile as I felt like I had a bit of an upset stomach. A bit of the 'gingerbread men' if you will. Well the upset stomach didn't go away and got gradually worse over the weekend until I had to call NHS24 on Sunday morning. By Sunday afternoon I was lying on a hospital bed hooked up to some IV antibiotics awaiting a slot in surgery to have my (stupid) appendix removed. I finally had the operation at around lunchtime on the Monday and now I'm going through the slow process of recovery from abdominal surgery.


For the next month or so this blog probably should be called Running Less.


Thankfully I had the less invasive, laparascopic, procedure. According to the surgeon I should not expect to be back running for around 4 weeks. I'm fully prepared to take this time out but depending on how I get on I might try something a bit sooner. I know the perils of coming back too soon after a lay off so won't be doing anything silly though.


As I was writing my last blog post I compared where I was this year in relation to last years training and was commenting on how good I was feeling. I had managed to avoid all the bugs that had been going around and my use of the gym had meant that the really bad weather didn't affect my training much. I was really looking forward to the next 6 hard weeks before I had start my taper for Lochaber.


So the problem now is what to do about the Lochaber marathon. If all goes well I could theoretically be back running for 4 weeks by the time it rolls round. Should I just run it with no specific goal time? Should I set a modest goal for it? Should I bypass it all together and find another marathon to focus on? Should I give up running and take up knitting?


You see, I'd kind of set my self a two year target of running a sub 3 hour marathon at London in 2012. The first stage of this was to qualify for London next year by running under 3:10 for a marathon by August of this year. This would secure me a 'good for age' entry which would give me a pretty good chance of running a fast time at London as I would get to start right behind the elites.


So what to do? What to do? Over the next couple of days I'm going to have a look at what alternative marathons I could consider and take it from there. If anyone had any advice I'd be really glad to hear it.