Back from holidays, but no running until Friday

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We've just got back from a whirlwind trip that took in Kobe, Hiroshima and Kyoto. I know Kobe well, but the surprise of the cities was Hiroshima - quite a cool little place. Nice cafes, good restaurants (both upmarket and okonomiyaki), parks, a good bike shop (important) a great running shop that sells a wide array of track shoes (even more important?). In Kyoto, we found an amazing cafe - if you're going there you must checkout a place called Resort Style Cafe - weird name, but it makes sense when you get there. The downside of Kyoto - the old people, they must be just about the rudest people in Japan, snappy, pushy, blasting car horns, crashing into you, pushing you out the way - awful. I guess they're sick of tourists.

Throughout the holiday I managed to complain about my knee. But the good thing was if I stopped and stretched it for a while the pain subsided - a sure sign it's all down to my maltracking pattela. So I'm getting a massage Thursday and should be running again Friday. I haven't run since December 24 - so it's been 8 days. It feels like longer. Although, I've been walking a fair bit some days. Far too many days off running at a really crucial time for my marathon buildup - but it's taught me a valuable lesson about post-race stretching and massage - namely, I need a lot of it.

From now until the marathon I'm going to get a massage every week. Steve says the K's Massage center at Takadanobaba accepts Shakai Hoken - so that might be the cheapest option.

I read an excellent book on the flight there - Running to the Top by Derek Clayton. Clayton (for those of you who don't know) set a world marathon record in 1969 of 2:08:33.6 that stood for 12 years. After the race he said he peed blood and vomitted black stuff for six months. He was an outsider, learning from his (many) mistakes and always pushing a bit harder that anyone else. In these days of EPO and other drugs it's always hard to know which runners to admire, but Clayton so obviously ran clean - he simply had the ability to push that bit harder than anyone else. Incredibly, his VO2 was only 69. Mine was 69 when I was 16. He was a heavy guy, so it would have been difficult for him to get a massive VO2, but few marathoners who have run a sub-2.10 marathon would record lower than about 78.

In Kobe, I went to the Nike factory outlet and bought lots of socks and some shorts. That'll be money wasted if my knee doesn't get better!

A new 10km men's world record was set yesterday in Madrid by Eliud Kipchoge who ran the distance in 26:54, beating Haile Gebrselassie's record of 27.02. Incredibly, the guy Kipchoge beat - Zersenay Tadesse - also matched the record but was beaten by a whisker. Craig "Buster" Mottram ran 27:38 to finish third.