Free Running Like a Girl by Alexandra Heminsley Page B

running training had made me stronger, but not symmetrically so. I had started to develop something of an imbalanced Frankenstein’s monster of a body. The front of one thigh was strong with a weak hamstring behind it. The reverse was true of the other leg, which was slightly farther forward than its partner on account of my misaligned pelvis. The pattern was repeating itself across my entire body, until my front hip flexor was no longer able to pull my leg forward without excruciating pain. All because one woman in a Chelsea Tractor could not be bothered to check her side mirrors four years ago.
    I sat on the edge of Josie’s consulting couch, watching my marathon dream fade to tatters. I swallowed time and again, desperate not to cry in front of someone I had just met. What was to be done? Could I run again? Or were all of those people who had claimed that running would “destroy your legs” correct after all?
    Josie calmly talked me through what I had to do and how we were going to get it sorted. Part of me had been hoping for something high-tech, a properly medical problem that could be remedied with a prescription. The reality was much the same as most of my running journey: Hard work was required. She told me immediately that I could not run for at least a month,until I had done exercises every day to strengthen and rebalance the muscle groups working so hard against each other. I began a daily regimen of painstaking Pilates-like movements—often while tied to a door handle or the back of a chair with stretchy physio banding to get the necessary resistance. Slowly, over the next few weeks, I managed to right myself. Though it was too late for me to be perfect in time for the marathon, the dream was not over. I submitted to whatever Josie instructed me, secretly impressed that I had endured the pain as long as I had.
    It wasn’t the pain or the tedium of the exercises that proved to be the worst part of the experience. It was not being able to run. Under Josie’s instruction, I joined my local gym for a month so that I could keep my fitness up on other machines. Anything but running. What so recently had been an activity that filled me with sheer dread was now what I longed to do more than anything else. I felt caged in the gym.
    I would wake having dreamed of running, and in my waking hours, I fretted endlessly about what would happen the next time I attempted a run. The idea that I once was anxious about buying a pair of socks seemed ludicrous compared to my fears about giving up running for good. Having gone from viewing my body as a tedious accessory to something genuinely useful, I now saw it as a great treasure. For six weeks I followed Josie’s orders; I shunned high heels; I prayed for the best.
    With running injuries, it is often the case that you don’t know how recovered you are until you undertake a long run. Though you have to be prepared to fail, you can’t let yourself consider that tiny window of possibility. As in a grim game of chicken, I vacillated between wanting as many people as possible to know about the injury and keeping it a secret so it couldn’t take hold and gain power over me.
    As marathon day grew closer, I began some tentative recovery runs. Amazingly, the pain had gone. It looked as if I would be on the starting blocks after all. I never managed to catch up with my original training plan, but I did what I could within the limited time frame. I got through March, thanks to Josie, late nights spent chatting on the London Marathon website, and a steady stream of texts, e-mails, and chats with my dad. I stretched, I fretted, I did my strengthening exercises. I watched the entire first season of The Wire standing with one foot tied to the bottom of a table leg. I did everything I could think of to get through, up to and including pestering everyone I knew for sponsorship, in order to drive home how much I needed to get round that course. One fact