6 days to go

This morning's run was both encouraging and dissapointing. It was a really cold morning to the east of Pretoria and I rode there on my motorcycle, this made me really cold for the start and I didn't stretch at all, which was probably not a good idea. Nevertheless it took me about 6/7km to really start feeling my knee badly. We did the first 6km in 45 minutes which is a comfy 7:30min/km, and then I had to walk some to stop hurting my knee. About 3 km later when my muscles start complaining about the fast walking I tried a slightly different gait, to stop my knee hurting. I mostly kept my left leg straigh and did a lot of the work with my right leg.

The result was that I finished the 15km in 1:56min which isn't that fast but it will get me to the finish line in under 3 hrs, 6km in 60 minutes is not too difficult. I'm definitely going to start the race, but what I'm also going to do is to rest my knee as much as possible. At the moment I'm sitting with a hotpack on it because it was actually really sore today, but thats probably because I've been sitting most of the time after the race. I flew down to Cape Town this afternoon on a very cramped 1time flight. I know what some people are thinking... that I'm doing damage, and you are probably right, but I've come too far to give up now.

This week I won't do much more than a few gentle walks. I don't think I can get any fitter now, and I'm pretty sure that the prep I've done will get me to the finish. Once I've done the race, I promise I'll let my knee heal!!