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!