Dear Agony Aunt,

...I’ve been two-timing my physio.

I feel like I’ve been cheating on my physio. It’s not him, it’s me. He has been very thorough and has worked really hard. He’s communicated with me as best he could, followed up by phone-call and email but ultimately I just couldn’t help but return to my old physio.

I feel a little guilty but I just wanted to get a second opinion and I hope he won’t mind. Thankfully they practice 50 minutes apart and as long as I don’t double-book myself with both he shouldn’t find out!

While seeing two physios at the same time is not morally wrong there is something that prevents me from telling the new physio I’d been seeing. It’s not like I’d be hurting their feelings, but even still.

I’m glad I did though. The old physio didn’t see anything different in what has been bothering me than what my newer guy had been saying. However, he knows me better and having treated me through three or four marathons at this stage he is confident that the bigger issue has been that I simply have not had the miles under my belt before I began training this time around. While this might sound strange, I mean surely you get the miles under your belt during training, he pointed out that to train hard for a sub-3 marathon means that you should be in the shape to train hard and having been out of running for several months with a beautiful new baby girl I probably was pushing myself too hard when I returned.

It's said with a confidence that makes me confident. It’s not my running style. Yes, I could and should keep my conditioning going but ultimately it comes down to simple mileage or lack thereof.

Where this leaves me is that I kind of wish I went to him in the first place. That sub-3 might be unrealistic though never say never. And that I am back training but I need to keep the training realistic and remembering that I can’t push it too much, not unless I want to have to make a decision as to which physio I should return to next.

Yesterday’s training

No running, just hours working in a garden. I guess it is a conditioning of sorts.