Former GB international Colin McCourt completed his first task of running a sub-16:00 5km and is now working towards a sub-2:30 marathon

So January hasn’t started off for me as well as I wanted, after committing to running a sub-2:30 marathon by the end of the year.

About a week into the new year I locked up my knee and was in pure pain every time I put my right foot down. Well actually, I couldn’t complete a full rotation on my right side. If I did it would just ache. I could run but in pain.

So that was me off for a few days to recover and see a physio. They couldn’t really put their finger on what was wrong but it seemed that I had locked my patella up as it couldn’t move freely when my leg was relaxed. It had come from my hip flexor being overly tight and pulling on the muscles around my knee.

As every runner, I tried to run on it for a week hoping it would go away but no, that didn't work. It never works so get to a physio, get it iced, stretch it, don’t run on it!

It's tough to stop running when all you want to do is run, though. I need to run, I love to run.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BeTWScljEDi/?taken-by=colinmccourt

I took so long away from running that I just don’t want to miss any more days, so I struggle with if I am being lazy or actually have an issue. As there were so many times when I was fit and young that I just didn’t run for no reason other that I just didn’t. I regret it and don’t want to repeat the same mistakes - I want to run every day, if I can. I want to try and be fast again. I don’t want to regret missing days for no reason again, while I am healthy and can run, I will run.

However, you need to be sensible, listen to your body and make the right choices. Last year I lost a lot of weight and my body will have taken a beating from running overweight. My joints will be sore and probably under stress so I need to recover better and think about what I am doing more. Now even more so as I will be running a marathon when I have never run for more than 90 minutes before. So yeah, this is going to be fun!

Okay, so on to the marathon! My knee is nearly fixed and then I am aiming for the London Marathon. Then hopefully there will be enough time to come back and do another one towards the end of year.

That’s the plan.

I know nothing about marathons other than the fact that they are long. So the learning has started. What can I do? That’s all I ask myself every day.

‘What can I do?’

Have a great week and see you next week, when normal training should be resumed!

» You can read more on Colin’s original comeback challenge here. Look out for regular blog posts from Colin here, while you can also follow his journey on Instagram here