My running history - all three years of it - has been two steps forward and one step back. (Not literally as that would be weird, even for me.)
But following the latest disaster I have decided that I might actually start doing this stretching thing I hear about...
1) My two and a half year old Piriformis Syndrome might have gone by now if I'd done some stretching.
2) The knee pain which developed a few months ago and turned out to be caused by very tight quads might not have happened if I'd done some stretching.
3) I might not have been "shot in the leg" on Saturday morning. I was just two or three minutes away from leaving the house to go and climb a mountain when I remembered that I had meant to replace the toilet roll in the bathroom. Rather than taking the toilet roll up the stairs (like a normal person would) I lobbed it from the foot of the stairs. As I threw it, something twanged spectacularly in my calf sending a shooting pain right up my leg, which was followed by severe calf pain and I could barely walk to the living room. I RICE'd it all of Saturday but have been working since (mostly sedentary fortunately) and am walking with the most embarrassingly theatrical-looking limp.
Lesson learned. Once this gets better, which I'm sure it will, I'm going to do those stretching exercises. I might even blow the dust off the foam roller!