At lunchtime today Stewart and I tackled the fearsome Glider Club run. 2 miles of continuous uphill followed by a mile of mixed up and down, then a steep descent back to Talgarth, all on tarmac. Actually today the tarmac was pretty much covered in mud, twigs and rivers.

This run re-wrecked my knee in November when I tackled it too soon after the plaster came off, but I’ve done it gently a couple of times since in around 37-38 mins.

It was a lovely day, sunshine breaking through after torrential rain, about 10 degrees with a bit of wind. A hint of warmth in the sun, delicious promise of springtime to come. We set off pretty briskly, Stewart huffing like a hippo for the first few minutes as usual, then graciously letting me keep up with him later on. I was well beyond VO2max for the duration – this was not a day for our usual discussions of semiotics, economics or domestics.

Then I managed to run downhill fast for the first time since the kneecap break, with only moderate pain letting me know that I should not be entering fell races for a while yet. I’d love to see some kind of slow-motion heat-mapped imagery of the forces exerted on the body when running downhill – I fear about 12 elephants are loaded onto the patellar region with every step (it certainly felt like it).

We finished in 34:22, which comes 18th out of my 31 recorded times – I am exceedingly pleased, and reassured that one day I may be able to run again…   (my PB for this run is around 32:00).

At the finish I did have a significant lump over the breakpoint on my knee, but a couple of brufen and a couple of hours saw it reduce.