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This time last year, my focus was in the gym lifting heavy weights as I wanted to be big and muscley. Outside of that I was attempting to be a hurdler/sprinter in athletics, which I decided wasn’t for me. My focus has switched massively over the past year, as over the summer I started challenging myself more on my running. This was mainly because Tom was marathon training so I was motivated to go out on runs with him, and because the weather was warm so I was in my element! Though my legs clearly weren’t used to the increase in volume of running and I kept finding myself having pain in the outside of my knee. One time when my knee pain kicked off, I was running with Tom in Scotland from a park to my grandparents house (would have been about 9-10km total), but at 7km my knee was killing me aaaand of course I was in the middle of a field. Luckily my mum came to find me in my teary mess, it was just SO frustrating that it would be so easily triggered.

I’ve had runners knee, which is also known as ITBS, it stems from a weakness in glutes which causes the IT band to over work and become irritated, causing the knee to over work and get sore, and in my case my hip started to overwork and became really sore too!

In October I ran my first half marathon, my aim originally was just to cross the finish line because I’ve been so up and down with my runners knee that I just didn’t think I would make it. Although my knee pain was triggered at 8km, I managed it in 1:43:16! I couldn’t walk for days, but got SUCH a buzz from it – if I didn’t have this knee problem I would have easily found another race to do the following weekend! I had to really stop myself and rest after this, no running, no cycling, no lower body weights… I just stuck to swimming, yoga and body balance for 2 months. To help with my injury recovery, I was going to a physio who was massively helpful! I found the acupuncture gave me the most relief, and my IT band felt much less tight afterwards. Having had previous experience of this injury, I already had a rehab exercises I was doing in the gym to strengthen my IT band and therefore my knee!

Once the knee pain had finally worn off while walking, I was able to start integrating some running into my training again. I was so happy to finally get back into running but had to strip it down to a walk-run programme, which involved 3 session at each level with no knee pain before moving on.

Here’s the programme I used:

30s run 4min30s walk

1min run 4min walk

1min30s run 3min30s walk

2min run 3min walk

2min30s run 2min30s walk

3min run 2min walk

3min30s run 1min30s walk

4min run 1min walk

4min30s run 30s walk

This was TEDIOUS for me, having run the half marathon I was in the mind-set of being able just to go go go now that my knee wasn’t sore. I really stuck with it though, and I’m so glad I did! I would recommend this programme to anyone who is recovering from and injury, or just looking to get into running. It gradually helps to build stamina, and reduces the strain it has on your body by taking regular walk breaks.

Running my first run without a break was hard, even though I’d been running at a quick pace for me when doing the programme, the lack of breaks really started to show! I did 3-4 5km runs without stopping which all felt hard, but ticked boxes for my knee rehab! My plan since has been to gradually build up volume in my sessions and to increase the distance of my long runs each week.

Recently, I went for a running analysis which has been super helpful for me! I was advised to increase my cadence (steps per minute) and therefore shorten my stride. This means I would be stepping closer to my midline and therefore reducing the impact on my ankle/knee/hips as previously each step was acting as a brake. The aim of this is injury prevention and to improve my running economy. Since the change, I’ve run 2 5km PBs and a 10km PB!

At the moment, I’m aiming to do a triathlon in April! So my running training is consisting of at least 3 sessions per week: 5km tempo, long run and a hills/interval session!