Training Mon 12th May - Sun 18th May

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!