Cramming

It's been a difficult month for me as far as training is concerned.  The two weeks in Romania involved one 4 km run.  However I did lose 3km with the manual labour of being a volunteer.  When I came back home my knees were aching from the constant bending down when putting the tents up or down and working 8 - 12 hours a day.  Now I'm back I've started training but my foot/calf injury came back and I took four days off training before I saw my wonderful sports therapist Pamela.  When I booked the meeting it was my right knee that was the problem - it kept collapsing.  But by the time my appointment arrived my foot was very uncomfortable and walking on it was difficult enough.
She focused on my foot/calf and finished off by spending some time on my right knee/quad.  I've got stretches' to do and hopefully it will start behaving.
In the meantime I have signed up with Beth's Personal Trainer to strengthen my body as for too long I have suffered injuries.  I'm not aiming for "beach muscles" but being stronger for my running.  First session is on Wednesday and Bart helped Beth in her prep for URR in 6 weeks so here's hoping.  He doesn't allow swearing and that will definitely be a f@@@@@g problem!
Today Beth and I headed to the "Arrochar Alps".  It was our intention to do 3 summits but when we got there it was all in cloud base.  We power walked to the top and my lack of training showed although one climber said she thought we were running so it was a decent pace.  Beth "threaded the needle" but there is no photographic evidence as you can hardly see the rock!  I did hold my breath while she did it as the rocks were slippy which meant she didn't get to the top of the rock (the Cobbler).  
We had a wonderful run down taking about 40 mins and I relied on my poles as my knees had a few weak moments - total distance up and down 11.7K.  We skipped the other two summits and agreed to get back home and run a lap of Chatelherault.  We arrived stiff from the drive but the sun had come out and again we had a fantastic, although tough lap (7.6k).  I was blowing out my arse but my heart  behaved itself although it did show up my lack of training.  It was interesting to watch Beth tackle, what in normal circumstances we'd call hills.  They didn't even feature for her having come back from the Romanian mountains. 
The reference to cramming is that in a month I have the Glasgow half marathon and two weeks later the Amsterdam Marathon.  This is not the recommended approach and it will be "reverse tapering".  I want to do well in both races but much will depend on how my knees/calf and foot hold up.  But I'm excited for the challenge and Beth will be racing both events.  I have the experience to run sensible races and also have the miles in the legs.  But I'll be pushing for PBs so lets see if the cramming works.
We've already got our races planned for the first half of next year, if we get in, and I'll provide those details in the coming weeks.