A Runner Again

It feels really good to be back into the routine of running. Everyone has different things that just click for them, and running is something that works for me. I've managed to put together two 58km weeks. The volume itself doesn't seem a problem. I've reached a long run of 2 hours and nothing feels particularly hard. As predicted it is trying to push the speed that creates problems. The slightly faster runs are where the hint of problems show up. During the runs are fine, but once I get down to anything faster than 5:00/km I'm getting some swelling and a bit of that awkward feeling around the injured ligament afterwards. Nothing major and it subsides quickly, but it is an indicator that's where my current limit lies.


The good news is if I hold the pace I seem to be able to keep adding distance. When preparing for ultramarathons that's the main priority. I'll keep my focus on that and let the speed follow up behind as my body allows. At least I'm now confident I will be ready to complete the 50km at the Surfcoast Century in September.

Despite a small amount of frustration at holding back on speed for most runs I'm really enjoying the lack of pressure that taking it easy provides. I'm hitting a level of relaxation in my runs that I don't think I've had before. It is providing a good bridge from my increased mindfulness training. Hopefully I can progress this into a stronger mind in races. The plan seems to be working okay, so I'll continue my cycle of:

  1. regeneration
  2. Faster
  3. Easy
  4. Long
  5. regeneration
  6. Long
  7. Easy
  8. Faster

Comments

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