50000steps.co.uk » recovery

Great North Run training: Weeks 5 & 6

Simon — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:00:23 +0000

Well, when it comes to training, the past two weeks have been uneventful. I’ve been proceeding with my recovery schedule and gradually increasing my training. It’s a very slow build-up and I won’t be able to get up to 13 miles in my training before the race. Gradually, however, my confidence is returning with every week that passes injury-free.

Also, in light of the latest advice, I’ve decided to scrap my old warm-up routine for a new one. Instead of doing fifteen minutes of static stretches (which involves moving the muscles beyond their natural range of movement to increase their elasticity), I’m doing more dynamic stretches, which helps lubricate the joints and warm-up the muscles better.

Dynamic stretches encourages more blood flow to the muscles, which means greater delivery of oxygen and improved flushing away of waste products from exercise (like lactic acid). That’s then followed by a five-minute jog to my usual starting point, where I start as normal.

Great North Run training: Week 4

Simon — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:05:32 +0000

Four weeks into my training now. I’m dreadfully behind schedule and any thoughts of completing this half-marathon in anything less than two hours have now thoroughly evaporated.

Earlier this week I decided to visit a physiotherapist. The deep muscle massage seemed to help relieve some of the pain in my muscle, but it did make it sore the next day. That was probably because I have deliberately rested it much as possible for the last eight weeks (on doctors’ orders). Now it seems to be healing and this has given me extra confidence that this is the beginnings of a permanent recovery.

As I said at the beginning, there is no way I can complete my original training plan and I probably won’t have time to build up to the half-marathon distance either, but I hope to get up to around ten miles before the race. The rest I’m sure will come on the day. Whatever state I’m in, I’ll still run it and enjoy it. The PB will have to wait until next year.

Great North Run training: Week 3

Simon — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:08:41 +0000

After last weeks’ good start, this week it felt more like a false dawn. I felt a recurring pain in my pulled muscle on a training run last Tuesday, so I decided to skip the next two runs on Thursday on Sunday, to see if it went away.

Being injured and attempting to train whilst recovering is so frustrating! Hopefully everything will have settled down again by the time of my next training run, so I can continue. This stop-start business with this injury and recovery is starting to knock my confidence that I will ever get back to where I was six months ago.

Great North Run training: Weeks 1 & 2

Simon — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:13:38 +0000

After the Monday training run I mentioned in my last post, my legs ached just a bit too much. Naturally I thought of the worst – that I had pulled the same muscle again – so I thought I’d better play it safe and skip my planned Wednesday run for that week. I hoped that this would give me enough time to recover for my Friday run.

As ever, I was anxious about returning to running again, however, this time everything just felt normal. No unusually aching muscles or any pain. Which made a nice change from what I’ve put up with for the last six weeks.

So I now I’m going to properly ease myself back into training and actually start following a training schedule again. It’s very mild compared to what I’m used to, but there’s no way I’m going to risk another six weeks of not being able to train.

What’s next?

Simon — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:35:16 +0000

After the marathon I took a couple of days of to recover and to regroup. For the rest of that week, I was on a high. I was surprised by how soon I recovered. Within three days of the event my muscles had stopped aching and I didn’t feel overly tired or exhausted at all. One of the decisions I made that week was to run another marathon. I couldn’t start training immediately for one, however, because I had already committed to running in another event.

So the focus has switched to my next fundraising event: the Leeds 10k. I applied for this before I applied for the London Marathon and before I had even heard of the Edinburgh Marathon (I ran in Edinburgh because I couldn’t get into London).

This means that there is a three-week training window between the marathon and the 10k, which is not ideal. I think it should be fairly easy going, however, as I’ve done several 10k training runs for the marathon, so I know I can easily complete the distance.

After Leeds? Well, I felt so good after Edinburgh and generally enjoyed the experience so much that I decided I wanted to run another marathon as soon as was reasonably possible. I didn’t want to wait another year for the next Edinburgh marathon and the London marathon is still a good nine months away, with no guarantee I’ll get in.

So I decided to run in the Dublin marathon. I never even knew Dublin had a marathon until I collected my race pack at the Edinburgh Marathon Expo. Entry is guaranteed and the event is aimed at beginners and improvers, so I think this would be a good opportunity to try and beat my PB (personal best) by shaving an hour off it – I aim to complete it in under 5h 30m.

Well, it’s always good to have something to work towards isn’t it?