Ready For The Next One?

Having the mindset to properly recovered and ready for the key training sessions seems to be working. Following a set of recent hill repeats, my left tibialis posterior has been protesting a lot with any running. It's something I've had a reasonable of trouble with in the past, and requires a little bit of prehab to keep it in check. This time, I pushed it further than it could handle. No real problem, its just meant I've had to keep running fairly easy for a few days and delay hitting a long paced run by a couple of days.

In previous years, I used to get quite concerned about missing or delaying the hard training sessions. This time I'm about as relaxed as I possibly can be about it. I now know I can't force my body into top shape. I need to provide the stimulus and recovery so it can adapt, but everything can only progress as fast as the weakest link allows. As usual the weakest link is the soft tissue. Will this tiny hold up work against me. Probably not by much. It may just cut out one moderate or even hard run before my first race on 7th April. What I do with the remaining sessions is up to me. A couple of very minor tweaks to the plan and I should still get everything I need out of the upcoming training.

Over the next two and bit weeks, the key runs will definitely mainly on hitting the paces and similar terrain that the upcoming races will deliver. Since the races include a cross country, a flat half marathon, a trail race and the hilly Great Train Race, the terrain really includes almost everything I get my feet onto. However, I will hit that terrain looking to replicate a lot of what I will need to be good at on race day. All other running will be just to support these key runs. Therefore, they will usually be very easy, recovery style running.

Comments

  1. Miles of the Journey17 March 2013 at 05:11

    can only progress as much as the weakest link allows. Finding that out too...taking some time off from the long runs too. We'll be back.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sandy Point Half Marathon

Image
Any race that uses a picture of myself as promotion makes me think I should compete in it. Wouldn't want to disappoint the masses. Last year my race slow and cold over the same course. A time of 1:30:20, was disappointing and a kick up the backside to get to what really works in training. Since then I have put in a lot of consistent kilometres and have seen some improvement. I was definitely going to race faster this year. Based on my race results over the last few months the hope was to see if I could get down to near 1:24:xx. The weather was very different this year. Far from cold, in fact I think it was our warmest night in a few months. However, there was a Damaging Winds warning issued, with predictions of 65km/hr gales to slow things downs a bit. The winds hit, according to the weather sites: NNE averaging around 50km/hr with gusts of 76km/hr. That made for some interesting race tactics. Luckily the rain held off until after the race. For some reason I felt ready with only 1...
Read more

Fitting Together

It's interesting how easy it suddenly becomes to prioritise aspects of life. I have missed plenty of training in the last week, but for the first time in my life, it really, and I mean really doesn't matter. That's not to say I am throwing training on the back burner. Far from it. Of course I am finding it hard working out how life now all fits together, but I am thoroughly enjoying the process. Training is now just part of the puzzle. What was a very easy load a couple of weeks ago, is now just manageable. This is what I anticipated. As things settle down and I work out of few things the training load should again become much easier. At the moment it looks like I will be able to get in all the key sessions, so in reality it is going fine.
Read more

The Gorge

For work I am currently stationed away from my normal branch. This is a recent roster change that I am not too happy about due to a number of reasons that I won't go into here. The good thing is that it gives me different roads to ride on when commuting. Nothing like a bit of variety to break things up. One particular bit of terrain that I now get to cover is known as the Gorge. It is exactly as the name suggests. The road that takes you into the Gorge is simple. One side is a very wide bend, that could almost be thought of as a straight road. The other side involves a couple of reasonable bends, which wouldn't normally be an issue, but can be when hitting speeds of 60km/hr on the descent. I want to make it clear that the Gorge is far from the toughest of climbs, while quite steep on both sides it is relatively short. So what is it about the Gorge. For me it has provided a good bench mark for my cycling fitness. Back when I first started on the bike it took all my ef...
Read more