Weekly Report from the Injury Bench.

Don't tell anyone I said this, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the past week.

Accepting that my shin would recover a lot more quickly if I stopped running was disappointing, but also quite liberating. I was giving myself permission to stop doing an activity which hurt and replace it with activities that didn't hurt. I stopped clinging hopefully to advice to "reduce mileage", and took note of Matt Fitzgerald's words in Brain Training for Runners:

Take it from one who learned the lesson in the hardest way possible. You will come out ahead in the long run (so to speak) if you adopt a zero tolerance policy towards injury pain ... and react to it with a hair trigger by ceasing your running as soon as the pain reaches red-flag level and not running again until you can do so without pain.

And later in the same chapter:

In the meantime, stay fit by replacing your running workouts with similar workouts in a nonimpact aerobic activity such as bicycling or deep-water running that you can do pain-free. Doing so will not only keep you fit while your injury heals and you correct its causes, but it will also greatly reduce the temptation to resume running too quickly.

I've had to fit my cross-training around a busy week at work, and think I've done not too badly.

Walking (with occasional little experimental runs): 33.04 miles, average pace 13.59mm.
Cycling: 95.07 miles.
Swimming: 3960m
Long Run Substitute: 70.8-mile bike ride with Leon, to Stratford and back along minor roads.
Niggles: Low back DOMS after my first bike ride in months. Must learn to relax in the saddle!
Sofa-spud days: None.

What I'm logging as "walking" has been done solely as training, unladen, wearing running-shoes, and concentrating on technique. I've probably walked almost as far again just going to work and to the pool and doing my housecalls. Being able to walk quickly without aggravating my shin has undoubtedly made cross-training more accessible.

All of my cross-training, give or take some uphill efforts on the bike, has been aerobic, and my body appears to have slipped happily into a routine of churning out little Krebs cycles instead of having to cope with unpredictable and sometimes intense demands for glycogen synthesis and breakdown. It feels as if it's ticking over very smoothly indeed :o)

My shin is definitely a great deal quieter than it was a week ago, but it wasn't entirely painfree when I tested it out with some very gentle running during my walk tonight so I'm anticipating at least another week on the bench.

Weekly Summary

[Looks for Grumpy Face Smiley.]

Running mileage: 10.31 miles, average pace 9.50mm, all of it on Monday.
Various permutations of walk/run sessions: 21.37 miles.
Swimming: 2.2 kilometres.
Climbing: One 90-minute session.
Niggles: Have I mentioned that my training has been temporarily kiboshed by a sore shin? Yes? Oh, OK. And the lining of my nose has been stripped off by the chlorine in the swimming-pool.
Sofa-spud days: Friday.

Taking notice of whether or not I like the idea of cross-training isn't a luxury I can afford. If I keep running, my shin isn't going to get better. I don't want to lose impetus, and I don't want to lose fitness. In my pre-running days, I kept in shape almost exclusively by walking and swimming, and I've turned the clock back. I'm working full-time this week and next, and the adults-only hour at our local pool is conveniently between my morning and afternoon sessions. Swimming isn't running, but it has the undeniable virtue of not making my shin hurt.

I suppose less running has to mean less chocolate ... roll on recovery ;o)

Spoke too soon!

On Monday I did just over 10 miles of running, split into two short runs. After the second run, my shin was sore, in a bad-dose-of-toothache-in-my-tibia sort of way, for fully half an hour.

On Tuesday, Leon and I went to Sutton Park to take some photographs of ourselves for the Brathay website and for the Centurion Running Club newsletter.

Yes, I know about the Q-angle and the K-bend and the femoral anteversion and the gruesome overpronation and the hairbrush-dodging, but ... does my bum look big in this?

;o)

After our photoshoot, we put on lots of clothes and went for a little off-road run. It proved to be even littler than we'd expected. We ran on the grass for about three-quarters of a mile, then set off down a rough, damp, stony path. F-lite 230s are excellent shoes for road-running, but they don't perform well when the underfoot conditions are more than slightly knobbly. I tensed up. My shin hurt. My left calf cramped. I had pain in my right buttock and thigh. Slowing down to walking-pace seemed the safest strategy.

I resolved then to stop running until I could walk without any shin pain.

Yesterday, I was climbing the walls. No, really. Leon and I are both partial to a bit of verticality, and for the first time in many months we dusted off our harnesses and climbing boots and went down to the Redpoint Climbing Centre to play.

Climbing is great fun, but it doesn't really help maintain running fitness. Now, I hate cross-training. I'm not an athlete, and I'm not the sort of person who exercises for the sheer joy of exercising. I'm a recreational runner. I don't want to do aqua-jogging, or spin on a stationary bike like a hamster on a wheel. I hate swimming. I'm too sound-sensitive to do "classes" at the gym (apart from yoga, and life's too short to waste on yoga).

I can't afford to lose fitness or training momentum, though. Leon has kindly offered to set up the turbo-trainer for me, and Kim has offered to lend me her aqua-jogging belt. Meanwhile, I'll do plenty of purposeful walking. I went to the local pool this afternoon and the experience wasn't as dire as I recalled, although my swimming is as scruffy as ever. Hopefully it won't be long before I'm back pounding the pavements.

Meanwhile, my priority is to make sure Leon doesn't forget to go out running :o)

Weekly Summary

Total mileage: 56.92 miles
Profile: 100% steady road running, average pace 9.42mm
Longest run: 11.32 miles at 9.29mm pace.
Niggles: Just my right shin!
Sofa-spud days: None.

As predicted, a slower week, with almost 80% of the mileage coming in the 5 days after a blood donation. It typically takes 10 days for my exercise tolerance to come back to normal.

I plan to do around 70mpw for each of the next three weeks, maintaining an easy pace. Leon and I have agreed that we ought to start including some speedwork in December. We'll have to work out the least disruptive way of doing this.

Earlier this year, with the 10-in-10 on our wish-list for 2009, we asked an experienced coach for training advice. He devised a schedule for Leon and tweaked the sessions for me to reflect my slower pace. Unfortunately, the schedules didn't take into account that Leon and I like to train together and that, historically, I'm the one who has been able to tolerate higher training loads. I was unhappy at not being considered capable of handling as many miles, or as many reps on interval sessions, as Leon was, and I was unimpressed that so much of our training would have to be done separately.

Well-intentioned advice on coping strategies, and reminders that lots of two-runner couples don't train together and that maybe I should go out and find new playmates of similar ability to myself, completely missed the point and left me feeling as if I was being unreasonable. My confidence in my athletic ability is a fragile thing, and when Leon said something that I interpreted as "I can't do my long runs with you because you're too slow," which was not, of course, what he actually said, it crumbled to dust.

I barely ran a step from mid-June until the beginning of August. Leon's training log for those weeks looks similarly sparse. What was the point in being divided by a shared interest?

Since we picked up our training again, it's been straightforward. Lots of steady aerobic mileage for both of us, running together whenever we can. More miles overall for me because Leon was sidelined with a virus for a few days. No fancy sessions that we've had to think hard about.

On Wednesday, we did our standard 8-mile route. Leon was wearing his new Puma Salohs and I was as curious as he was to see how they performed when he ran fast, so I suggested that he went ahead, did a faster mile while I continued to plod along at my own pace, and came back to meet me. He did that three times. It was a very successful session and it may be worth looking at variations on that theme.

Meanwhile, I need to make more red blood cells before even thinking about speedwork ;o)

Easy Week and a shoe experiment

I'd planned to make this a pretty easy week training-wise. No particularly hard sessions. Not worrying too much about mileage...

My Inov-8 f-lite 230's are coming towards the end of their useful running life, and having reached 603 miles they have done themselves proud. I'll get a little more out of them before I wear trough the outsole, but I doubt that I'll get to 700 miles - so less than a week of running left in them!

In the absence of a promised new pair of f-lite 230's from Inov-8, I ordered a Puma Salohs to try. It's a shoe that a number of people who have a similar running style to me wear, and I thought that this would be an ideal opportunity to try them out.
They are very comfortable - the midsole and outsole are made of denser materials than the f-lite, and the 'feel' on the ground is slightly less 'direct'

The decent test I gave them was on a 9 mile run that I did with Lorna, into which I injected 3 Tempo miles - at 6:13 - 5:53 and 5:50 min/mile. It's a shoe that comes into it's own at faster paces, although the harder compound rubber outsole is not as grippy on damp pavements as to be ideal.
It's a shoe that I'll road-test properly, as I'm often asked for advice with regard to shoes and the differences between them!!

The remainder of the weeks' training was all spent running with Lorna - and so it was with some surspise that I found that I'd racked up 57 miles. I really didn't notice the distance, which I'm guessing has to be a good sign.
Just the one day where I didn't especially enjoy running, all the rest were fabulous

57.24 miles
One Intervals-ish session that was 9.4 miles long
47.84 miles of aerobic running.

Quite a pleasing result for what was planned as an easy week and felt like an easy week!!

More of the same next week I think.

Lorna and I had a chat the other night and agreed that introducing some speed and harder stuff through December in the build up to a targetted faster 'raced' marathon in February made a great deal of sense, and then maintain that speed while building up the back to back long days in the run in to May!

Sounds like a plan!!

A Right Shin-annigan :o(

I still have shin splints. It's nothing worse than that, and according to this article from Peak Performance, I have a moderately severe dose of this common running injury and should be reducing my mileage and doing exercises to strengthen my ankle dorsiflexors. Bah! Why couldn't the cure involve eating raspberry cheesecake rather than doing boring exercises?

The article also recommends NSAIDs. I know runners who don't get out of bed without taking ibuprofen. I never normally take NSAIDs for anything other than period pain. But I'm going to take 1g of nabumetone daily for the next week to see whether it makes a difference.

Last week, I did have quite a drastic cutback week ...

Total mileage: 35.5 miles
Profile: 82.5% steady road running, average pace 9.37mm
3.5% running with Beth (12), average pace 10.42mm
14% Centurion Grand Prix 5-mile race, average pace 8.14mm
Longest run: 9.2 miles at 9.51mm
Niggles: Just my right shin, in case I haven't mentioned it already.
Sofa-spud days: Saturday

My legs were clearly hungover from the weekend, as demonstrated by the slower average pace (though it hasn't dropped below my target training pace) and, especially, by my performance at the club race. The Centurion Grand Prix 5-mile race is run once a month for six months, and this month's was the first in the current series. This time last year, I ran it in 36:46 and got an age category prize. On Sunday, I took 41:11 over it (a PW for the course if you exclude the time I ran it with a dose of gastroenteritis) despite being at a good racing weight and having some decent mileage behind me. There was no power in my quads or hamstrings.

Considering how close I came to not starting at all because my shin was painful, I'm happy enough with that result.

This week's mileage will be higher, but the pace will be relatively sedate because I donated blood yesterday afternoon. I was able to run a few hours later, but every little updulate exposed the fact that I'd lost a chunk of my oxygen-carrying capacity. Nothing a few steak butties won't put right :o)

A light week - and an unexpected PB!

Following the exertions of last weekend, a nice cutback week was definitely on the menu. I probably overdid it a bit - more than halving my mileage from the week before, and getting to the end of the week in no frame of mind for racing.

But my children were in residence, and wanted to race. Especially my eldest who has a decent chance of placing in the series if he does four of the 6 races.

The series is the Centurions Grand Prix - a series of 5mile (and 2K) races held on the first weekend of the month from November, meaning that Race 1 was on Sunday. Come the morning and my 3 little 'uns were all up for it. Whereas I was looking out of the window and secretly hoping that the weather would grace us with enough inclemency to have to stay indoors!
No such luck!
Overcast and a bit dreary looking, but no rain, little wind, and relatively warm in the circumstances.
We ran with the kids in the 2K to keep warm, and because it is just the Best being able to run with your kids


I ran with my middle child - who had to work hard being, as he is, the least sporty of my brood! He ran his little legs off, became pink of face, and smashed his PB for the course by over a minute - AND dipped under 14 minutes.
A magnificent achievement.
My youngest, who's 6, ran completely on her own for the first time and it was fantastic to watch her. She has a running style to die for!
She didn't pb - but I was really proud of her in completing the whole course without the need for verbal cajoling, or someone to hold her hand.
Fantastic!!
My eldest ran hard, finished in 9th place - then declared himself disappointed with the way he ran. He shouldn't be. He actually did fantastically well - and was only 14 seconds slower than his best for the course - AND there was a closed gate to negotiate which is normally open!

Having taken the kids back to the Gym for shelter and warmth, Lorna and I headed back to the start. I STILL wasn't sure how I was going to run, and was definitely not in race-mode.

I decided to see how the first mile went, and take it from there. And I felt OK!
Marginally over 6 min/mile pace, and running hard but steady.
By the time half way came, I had consolidated my place, and felt strong enough to click off pretty regular mile splits - so I did. And in so doing posted an 8 second PB.

I was reminded after finishing just how friendly our club is, as I was approached by a number of folk who all introduced themselves and had a chat. Excellent!

Back to the training this week. Not too hard, but keeping the miles ticking over.

Just one observation from todays run.

There are occasions when you run in such a way that you seem to just stroke the ground backwards with little effort, like you are only touching the ground to stop gravity pulling you downwards. Much of the 8 miles Lorna and I ran today felt like that. It was very satisfying!

262 miles ...

... that's 10 marathons, isn't it?

It's also my total mileage for October.

Just need to be able to condense that into 10 days now!