Monday 9th I decided to go to the gym, which I had been absent from for quite a while with a combination of an increased running schedule and the laser eye. It was pouring with rain so the run to the gym was not nice, and by the time I got there I was pretty damp. I did about an hour of weights, chest, shoulders back and arms (no legs) and run home (it was still raining)

On the 10th I went for a 9km run in the morning and in the evening a 8km run, the intention being to have Wednesday off and then run Thursday, Friday off then the long run on Saturday. Due to factors outside my control this didn’t happen.

On the Monday I started to experience some discomfort with m eyes, nothing major and to be honest I thought nothing of it. I figured that it was all part of the healing process, Tuesday was worse with my vision decreasing and it appearing that I was getting more shortsighted, with sensitivity to light. I had an appointment with Ultralase on the Wednesday so decided I would discuss it with them, Wednesday came about and it had gotton worse, to the point where I was getting white outs and really struggling. Getting to London was a real pain given the vision issues, but I managed it.

When I described what I had been experiencing intially they couldn’t see why it would be happening, but I had some more tests and when they did my eye pressure it came out at 47 (anything over 21 being not normal). What I was told was that I was having an Optical Edema due to the Steroid eye drops, me being one of 2 people that they have ever seen with this reaction (and my own research after indicating that this reaction is a rare genetic abnormality). Obviously the Edema is not good, with words the doctor used of “worst case, possible optic nerve damage”. I was given lots of drugs to take to get the pressure down, and thankfully they kicked in and on the Thursday my vision had improved 100%. My followup appointment on the Friday indicated that everything was normal, and my pressure had fallen to 9 (my normal reading being 15 and 18) but another followup appointment next week will hopefully confirm everything is ok and my pressure will stabilise.

So, due to the above all form of training was out the window until after the appointment Friday and Sunday was my next available date to run, which I did and an easy paced 19km followed.

More good news, the profile for the Trail Marathon Wales is out and wow, does it look tough. Below is the race profile and as you can see, a lot of up!! 4821 feet of ascent (1470 meters), so any sense of doing it in a certain time is out the window, it will be a case of enjoying the views and just finishing, even if that is last.

They have a blog for the Trail Marathon Wales so if you fancy reading it, the link is here: http://tmwblog.com/

Incidently am taking the decision to switch to miles rather than km after Offa’s Orror next week as all the other events that I have booked are in miles, so it makes sense to make the change, and work on my pacing in min per mile.