This weeks training saw a marked increase in both quantity and quality. Excepting Wednesday, I managed two running sessions a day plus three gym workouts and a long swim. Wednesday's second run session was swapped to a bike ride only due to soreness in my calf thanks to my overly friendly sports masseuse!
I was really pleased (overjoyed in fact), with how my body coped with it all. By listening to it, and ensuring I had enough recovery between sessions, as well as including a number of slower recovery runs, I was able to get through to Saturday, having done a full weeks training, in one piece for the first time since January! I was particularly pleased with Tuesday’s track session. I was, very much like last week, hesitant about stepping onto the tartan bowl, especially as the session was a real speed workout of 3 sets of 4 x 400 metres. I made sure I stayed within myself. Firstly because I hadn't run fast for a long time and I wanted to make the end of the session without losing my lunch! Secondly I didn't want to stress my calf too much, as the problem calf is my right which has to work harder than the left as you run round the track in an anti clock wise direction, causing more force to be put on the right leg as it actually has further to run than the left! I surprised myself with how fast I was able to go without stressing my body too badly. I was even able to hang onto the coat tails of my Tuesday night training partner, which after only one previous bit of speed work on the track, was a revelation to him as much as it was to me!
The other big event of the week was my first step into the world of sports psychology, which isn't actually the mental therapy some people think it is. There was no dragging up of deep, dark childhood secrets! I was actually fearful of this as my chosen sports psychologist, Michele Miller, who works with the British Sprint squad and Diving team in their preparations for the Olympics, is actually my old PE teacher from school, and those school days contained some very deep and very dark secrets! But rather than the session uncovering the widely held assumption that I am a mad man it was more focused on straightening out how I conducted myself with regards to my athletic career. From restructuring my training and setting tough but obtainable goals, to whether I was prepared to push myself well outside of the comfort zone, in order to answer the question of how good I can be, and whether I was prepared to face the fear that my best just might not be good enough. In pushing that boundary I might well achieve every thing and more that I could have hoped for from my running.
An additional positive to come from the session, and one very much close to my heart, is that my so-called laziness and reluctance to get out of my pit in the morning, is completely normal. In fact many of the truly elite athletes Michele works with are as equally hard to prise from their beds in the morning. It's not that I have some psychological problem, more that I really and truly need the rest. Please take note friends and family members!!
So, as we stand at this present time everything seems to be going really well (Touch a very large piece of wood!). From my own piece of amateur psychological analysis I've noticed that my running has been helped on it's way by positive actions taking place in my personal life. That my running is very much intertwined with how my life away from the track plays out. As I become happier and more content with life, I become happier in my running and vice versa, not that I was ever sad and discontent you understand! I don't think it really matters if it was the chicken or the egg that came first, more that the egg functions a bit better with a chicken! Now that's a sentence that needs some psychological dissection!
Wednesday 21 May 2008
Tuesday 13 May 2008
Training Mon 5th May - Sun 11th May
Since I've come back from Lanzarote I've had quite a different approach to my training. I feel so much more disciplined with what I'm doing. Every session I'm completing has it's own purpose, and it's own effect. All of which are positive and are making me more confident that that I'll achieve what I want to do with my running. This in turn, keeps my motivation levels sky high.
All the extra training elements, and the new regimes I picked up and promised myself I would keep, have been kept, bar the getting up early part! I've improved greatly and since I've been back I haven't even come close to getting up in the pm! I'm treating it like my training, as I slowly increase the mileage, I slowly decrease my time spent looking at the back of my eyelids. No need to do too much too soon! But as for the rest of the new regime, it's going well. Gym work, as well as core strength and stability exercises, are now more organised and focused, with greater emphasis on running specific strength and conditioning exercises. I'm also increasing my flexibility well. No longer do I wake up stiff as a board, barely able to walk down the stairs. I'm now up and running straight away thanks to my gentle morning gymnastics! I’m taking great inspiration from TV-AM's fitness whiz Lizzy. (You remember her!?) A great blast from the past, as I remember my Mum using the same video in the mid 80's when I was a wee whippersnapper. You'll be glad to know I've only used the video as a guide, and the majority of the exercises are from a more up to date and competent source. But I like to put her tape on whilst I'm doing my exercises, it's an even better way to start the day when you can marvel at the most wonderful 80's perm and dazzlingly disgusting sweatshirts!
Running wise this week I felt ready to attempt my first speed session. I demanded that my coach set the group a longer slower session, just to accommodate me, and to my surprise he did. I didn't want to ruin my rehabilitation running 300 metre reps! So we were set 4 x 1500 metres. As this was my first bit of speed work in well over two months I proceeded with great caution. With each rep I slowly increased my lap times. It felt really good to be pushing myself again. But I kept it controlled and didn't give it everything. I ended up running the final rep a minute quicker than my first.
The next morning I was suffering from some stiffness in my calves. But that's quite normal for me after a track work out. If anything, my legs felt better than normal, which is another good sign that my conditioning work is paying off.
By Thursday my legs were quite tired and I felt susceptible to injury and tightening of the muscles, so I took a rest day, rather than trying to run for the sake of running. I now take greater care over what my body's trying to say to me. I followed this up with a day of non-impact training and hit my new cross training best friends, the pool and the bike.
Over the weekend normal service was resumed. I finally completed the full set of running sessions. A quick twenty-minute tempo run and the fail-safe long Sunday run. I'm pleased to report that everything is in one piece and for the first time in a long while I'm looking forward to a full weeks training.
All the extra training elements, and the new regimes I picked up and promised myself I would keep, have been kept, bar the getting up early part! I've improved greatly and since I've been back I haven't even come close to getting up in the pm! I'm treating it like my training, as I slowly increase the mileage, I slowly decrease my time spent looking at the back of my eyelids. No need to do too much too soon! But as for the rest of the new regime, it's going well. Gym work, as well as core strength and stability exercises, are now more organised and focused, with greater emphasis on running specific strength and conditioning exercises. I'm also increasing my flexibility well. No longer do I wake up stiff as a board, barely able to walk down the stairs. I'm now up and running straight away thanks to my gentle morning gymnastics! I’m taking great inspiration from TV-AM's fitness whiz Lizzy. (You remember her!?) A great blast from the past, as I remember my Mum using the same video in the mid 80's when I was a wee whippersnapper. You'll be glad to know I've only used the video as a guide, and the majority of the exercises are from a more up to date and competent source. But I like to put her tape on whilst I'm doing my exercises, it's an even better way to start the day when you can marvel at the most wonderful 80's perm and dazzlingly disgusting sweatshirts!
Running wise this week I felt ready to attempt my first speed session. I demanded that my coach set the group a longer slower session, just to accommodate me, and to my surprise he did. I didn't want to ruin my rehabilitation running 300 metre reps! So we were set 4 x 1500 metres. As this was my first bit of speed work in well over two months I proceeded with great caution. With each rep I slowly increased my lap times. It felt really good to be pushing myself again. But I kept it controlled and didn't give it everything. I ended up running the final rep a minute quicker than my first.
The next morning I was suffering from some stiffness in my calves. But that's quite normal for me after a track work out. If anything, my legs felt better than normal, which is another good sign that my conditioning work is paying off.
By Thursday my legs were quite tired and I felt susceptible to injury and tightening of the muscles, so I took a rest day, rather than trying to run for the sake of running. I now take greater care over what my body's trying to say to me. I followed this up with a day of non-impact training and hit my new cross training best friends, the pool and the bike.
Over the weekend normal service was resumed. I finally completed the full set of running sessions. A quick twenty-minute tempo run and the fail-safe long Sunday run. I'm pleased to report that everything is in one piece and for the first time in a long while I'm looking forward to a full weeks training.
Tuesday 6 May 2008
Training Monday 28th of Apil - Sunday 4th May
On Monday and Tuesday I continued to slowly build up the time I spent on my legs during each run. By Wednesday I was up to half an hour and things were progressing nicely. I was taking great care to spend an adequate amount of time warming up and down with every run. Although I was spending a maximum of half an hour going through the motion of running, the whole session was taking well over an hour. This slow methodical approach to warming the body up and down is something that is very easy to scrimp on, and I often do, but as I continue to persist with the same approach to each session, it's becoming more of a normal routine, and is something that I will really endeavour to persist with once I'm back to full fitness.
On Wednesday afternoon I paid a visit to my friendly masseuse/sadist. We decided to again focus the session on my calf as he could still feel some tightness. Throughout the hour-long appointment he slowly increased the pressure, which in turn slowly increased the pain! He applied more pressure than he has ever used upon me before. He felt it was now safe to use such intense force as the muscle had repaired sufficiently so as not to have a negative effect on my rehabilitation from the injury. I felt like an old man as I walked down the stairs and back to my car once we were done. My immediate reaction was that I'd gone in with a relatively intact calf muscle and left with a completely knackered one. But I trusted him that he had done me some good.
I rested for the rest of the day, as the session had caused some trauma to the calf. The next day my leg still felt very battered and very bruised, but that was in some strange way a positive. I could feel no tightness, and I had almost complete flexibility in the leg as I stretched it out before my first session of the day. No pain no gain I guess, just as long as it's the right sort of pain!
As the rehab phase was going so well I decided to up the work load to two runs a day, still keeping each session at a low volume and intensity, but the move to two runs a day was a good move in increasing my running based fitness as well as the strength in the damaged calf.
By Saturday I was confident enough with my calf to now increase the intensity. The first fast-ish run went really well. My calf handled it all perfectly. I was finding the pace a little hard to cope with aerobically, but that is understandable as it's nearly two months since my last hard session. What I didn't expect was the way the rest of my muscles reacted to the increase. When you injure a certain area of the body all the focus is on that point. You rehab it, building strength and slowly build up your training to allow the area to readapt to the forces involved. What you tend to forget is that it isn't just my calf that's taken a two month break, the rest of my leg muscles were on holiday too! So by Thursday evening my thighs felt like they'd run a marathon! Thankfully I knew it was just soreness rather than anything more serious. Not exactly a positive sign, but a sign that I was now beginning to become strong a fit again. And that the runs I was now able to perform were at a level where, for the first time in my rehab, I'm able to push my body hard, and to an increased limits my body can take.
By Sunday I was ready to go out for an hour. It felt good to be out for a decent length of time again. And it proved to me once more that I'm making real progress. But for the last quarter of the run, my lack of specific running based training really became evident. I was exhausted. My whole body was tired, let alone my legs. So I treated myself to the rest of the day on the sofa, a key element in any decent athletes' rehabilitation, in various states of consciousness. Now, I just have to remain disciplined as I increase my workload, taking care not to attempt too much to soon. Not to run before I can walk!
On Wednesday afternoon I paid a visit to my friendly masseuse/sadist. We decided to again focus the session on my calf as he could still feel some tightness. Throughout the hour-long appointment he slowly increased the pressure, which in turn slowly increased the pain! He applied more pressure than he has ever used upon me before. He felt it was now safe to use such intense force as the muscle had repaired sufficiently so as not to have a negative effect on my rehabilitation from the injury. I felt like an old man as I walked down the stairs and back to my car once we were done. My immediate reaction was that I'd gone in with a relatively intact calf muscle and left with a completely knackered one. But I trusted him that he had done me some good.
I rested for the rest of the day, as the session had caused some trauma to the calf. The next day my leg still felt very battered and very bruised, but that was in some strange way a positive. I could feel no tightness, and I had almost complete flexibility in the leg as I stretched it out before my first session of the day. No pain no gain I guess, just as long as it's the right sort of pain!
As the rehab phase was going so well I decided to up the work load to two runs a day, still keeping each session at a low volume and intensity, but the move to two runs a day was a good move in increasing my running based fitness as well as the strength in the damaged calf.
By Saturday I was confident enough with my calf to now increase the intensity. The first fast-ish run went really well. My calf handled it all perfectly. I was finding the pace a little hard to cope with aerobically, but that is understandable as it's nearly two months since my last hard session. What I didn't expect was the way the rest of my muscles reacted to the increase. When you injure a certain area of the body all the focus is on that point. You rehab it, building strength and slowly build up your training to allow the area to readapt to the forces involved. What you tend to forget is that it isn't just my calf that's taken a two month break, the rest of my leg muscles were on holiday too! So by Thursday evening my thighs felt like they'd run a marathon! Thankfully I knew it was just soreness rather than anything more serious. Not exactly a positive sign, but a sign that I was now beginning to become strong a fit again. And that the runs I was now able to perform were at a level where, for the first time in my rehab, I'm able to push my body hard, and to an increased limits my body can take.
By Sunday I was ready to go out for an hour. It felt good to be out for a decent length of time again. And it proved to me once more that I'm making real progress. But for the last quarter of the run, my lack of specific running based training really became evident. I was exhausted. My whole body was tired, let alone my legs. So I treated myself to the rest of the day on the sofa, a key element in any decent athletes' rehabilitation, in various states of consciousness. Now, I just have to remain disciplined as I increase my workload, taking care not to attempt too much to soon. Not to run before I can walk!
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