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Day 91 – New Trainers, Same Old Problems

Nike Fly Knit Lunar 1+

After the 100+ mile exploits of last week, the plan for the coming week is to lower the mileage considerably ahead of giving the Coventry Half Marathon on Sunday a fair crack. This mileage will be very low if the left thigh and hip continues to give me this much trouble.

I thought with a short run on the plan, today would be a good day to try out the trainers I plan to trial on Sunday with the intention to wear them at Rotterdam should they prove successful. They are certainly very light and judging by the first mile, which was pretty quick for a first recovery run mile, especially with very stiff legs. However I’m not convinced yet whether they are quite as quick as my ageing Lunar Racers, we shall see when they are hopefully used in anger.

The run was a routine affair but the left thigh was still aching like I had a dead leg. My massage on Thursday cannot come quick enough for although it’s not slowing me hugely yet, I think it will only be a matter of time before it does. There are tender spots all over the hip, leg and back, all of which will need attention and soon.

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Day 71–Body Says ‘No’

The morning run was a routine affair, up to Great Gonerby, narrowly missing out on the Strava segment for the hill by one second (one day I’ll hit that hill later on in the run when I’m warmed up), then looping around and back down. Nothing amiss, nothing to indicate how my body would feel later in the day. I even missed a downpour by around 20 seconds which made me feel pretty good.

The evening run was scheduled to be intervals with the club – 3×2 miles with a 1 mile jog recovery. I’d intended to try and run them at something close to half marathon pace, which in theory should have been attainable as that is around 15 seconds or so slower per mile than the last set of mile reps I did on the same stretch of A52.

Things didn’t bode too well when we shuffled from the Railway Club to the Muddle roundabout. We were crawling, but it felt like hard work, my tummy in particular not feeling great. I certainly didn’t have much enthusiasm for what I was about to subject my body to – an attempt at picking up the pace for a few hundred meters left me under no illusions that this was going to be tough.

I set off first for the first rep. It would be on an evening like this when having a training partner of similar pace would have been a godsend, someone to keep your motivation and effort up when you are flagging. Tonight, I was out front, alone, and the master of my own destiny. Unfortunately the body was quite quickly starting to say no! 

The first mile was 5:56, the second was the best of the evening 5:46 and hitting the kind of heart rate I was expecting to attain. The recovery mile was a trial, the tummy showing every intention of giving trouble and an overwhelming feeling of fatigue, or as Sean Kelly would say fateeeg. Within a minute of beginning the second rep I knew something was amiss, as hard as I’d try I just couldn’t break six minute mile pace and the HR was dropping the harder I was trying. By the end of the first of two miles I carried on and ducked into the Muddle for an emergency pit stop. I hoped that would cure my ills, but alas recommencing the rep it was clear things were not going my way.

I completed those two miles in 6:05 and 6:01 which, when looking at the HR they were ran at weren’t too bad, but this wasn’t the session I was planning to run. Worse struck on the recovery mile as my right shin began aching somewhat alarmingly from seemingly out of the blue. There was little I could do but try and pretend the pain wasn’t happening.

Maybe it was the shin pain, the fatigue of two weeks running without a day off, the Stamford 30k, the 22 mile run on Sunday, one too many stock cubes in the soup I made for lunch (Very, very salty), the breeze, the cold, maybe it was even missing my buddy the 910XT. Whatever it was, the third and final two mile rep was a miserable mess. The splits were a little skewed but the mile out was run in around 6:27, the mile back was 6:21. Okay so these aren’t calamitous and if I applied a little spin and note that the heart rate average was at my long run HR – the splits aren’t half bad and the session was a success.

As it stands running along watching the HR drop uncontrollably and with it the pace was not a pleasant experience. The mile or so home was an equally slow affair. The evening was spent being very, very tired, wondering what on earth was causing the shin pain (which, incidentally, all but disappeared the following morning). A day off for Wednesday was booked. Rest is required, rest is what the body will get.

Not hitting targets in sessions is inevitable for a runner, this is by no means the first and it won’t be the last. I think what has unsettled me is this is the first bad session in months and it left more questions than answers. Hopefully I’ll bounce back stronger and faster with a bit of rest!

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Day 56–On The Bike

With any thought of running in the foreseeable future supressed as much as possible to the back of the mind – to avoid rampant depression and extreme likelihood of injuring myself further should I succumb to temptation and don the trainers – I made a late decision to go out on a bike ride. The sun was shining and the wind had mercifully dropped after a week or more of very strong winds.

I should have gone out on the racing bike, but that is currently out of reach due to a huge number of empty boxes and other junk blocking access to the bike bag which contains bike, helmet, gloves cycling shoes etc.. Fortunately I had a back up in cheap hybrid bike I brought in September principally as a means to get around town quickly – it’s far quicker than being in the car at most times of day here in Grantham. I had to improvise somewhat with the clothing as I’ve long ago discarded most of my winter cycling gear – the most disturbing prospects of cycling was doing so with a skateboard helmet and a pair of trainers with not even toe clips to help drive the power efficiently. Hardly the most professional set up.

It was surprising then that I managed to complete 25 miles at an average of 17mph – not a million miles away from what I might do on a racing bike. I struggled on the drags and the hills (usually my strong point on a bike but not today) but was otherwise reasonably fast and enjoyed doing some exercise. I do enjoy cycling – as a kid I preferred it much more to running. I just live in perennial fear of puncturing or crashing which is the main reason I don’t cycle more, that and the time it takes up putting in a decent ride.

Unfortunately the ride was not pain free. I remember when I cycled into town at the beginning of January the groin and hip was painful – something I’ve never experienced on a bike. I was fine today for the first fifty minutes or so, but then there was a puling sensation from the groin down to the knee along the inner thigh. I think until I see someone there is little point in risking further injury.

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Day 55–Rock Bottom

Things are not looking good for Project Sub 2:45. I’d go as far as to say if the marathon were held this weekend not only would I not have finished, I would have struggled massively to make it to halfway. the frustrating thing is I’m still not totally sure what the injury is or what is causing it. I need to find a Physio in Grantham and fast!

After two days off to let the injury rest a bit – plenty of massage, but, in hindsight, probably not enough stretching – I decided to head out this Sunday morning with the intention of running long. I’d decided though to stay local in case the injury became unbearable – a move that proved to be prophetic.

As with Thursday the opening mile or two were trouble free, running reasonably swiftly despite the gale force winds battering me or pushing me along depending on the direction I was running in. Then the little worrying signs began to kick in: the slight ache in the groin; a heavy feeling in the quad; then discomfort that began to radiate down the inner thigh before settling just above the knee, moving from the side to the back; a sharp pain in the lower hamstring which sporadically came to affect the calf.

The difference between today’s run and Thursday’s was that it took around 8 miles for the pain to kick in on Thursday and only became a big problem in the final couple of miles; today between it being a niggle at five miles I could cope with, by the time I’d navigated a steep climb and descent at six miles, I was stopping every couple of hundred meters and could barely shuffle along.

I decided to abandon the run and head home. I was a couple of miles away – at 7.6 miles I had to stop and walk for around 10 minutes as the pain was too much to run. I was then able to run slowly home with some considerable discomfort, any thoughts of running further dismissed without hesitation.

Once home and the post mortem began. I’ve working on the idea of it hopefully being Piraformis Sydrome but I’ve quietly resigned to it probably being something which will take longer to fix. Time to dust off the bike or find a gym…

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Day 52–The Wheels Begin To Fall Off

The right leg felt sufficiently better during the day to see me out for the Thursday night club run – it included five or so minutes of running with the buggy as I was late collecting my daughter from school. I didn’t go into the run with any great confidence of a positive outcome however – a feeling that I had a cold brewing didn’t help matters.

I ran 4.5 miles before joining up with the club – keeping close to home in case things went very wrong. The weather was miserable – wet and cold, only a degree or so above the point when snow would turn to sleet and then snow. My legs felt heavy and I struggled to enthuse myself. Things picked up a touch when I ran to the club – there was still very little pain in the right leg aside from a niggle near the knee.

We ran the same route as last week – to Belton House, then Londonthorpe before heading back to Grantham. We checked out our potential new meeting place – a cycle storage and changing facility behind the Tolle. It met with my approval as I acquired a sudden need to test the facilities with an emergency pit stop.

That inconvenience over and I felt a little more lively – something in the stomach clearly hadn’t agreed with me. Splashing along in the puddles I took a slightly longer route than my club mates so spent a mile or so making my way back to the front of the pack by the time we reached Belton House.

It was here where the inner thigh near the knee began to get quite sore when running. It was enough to slow me a touch although I couldn’t decide if it was more painful to run slowly or quickly. I settled mostly for something in the middle as I took a wrong turn somewhere in the dark and spent the next half mile heading back to the front of the pack and pushing on – feet by now totally soaked as large swathes of the road resembled streams and tributaries.

We climbed up through Londonthorpe and on the quiet narrow lane that takes us back to Harrowby and Grantham. By now the thigh was constantly quite painful and the discomfort and tightness began to spread to the upper calf. My consternation must have been fairly obvious as a few club mates asked if I was okay. I grumbled something about being injured and having to ease back for the next week or so.

Once into Harrowby and near the Girls’ school, I said my farewells and took the shorter way back home, the internal GPS successfully predicting, almost to the metre, that there would be exactly sixteen miles covered by the time I reached home.

A stretch in the rain then a long hot shower to warm up, followed by a twenty minute ice session, something I’ve not needed to do for the best part of a year. The following morning and there was no killer pain, thankfully, but enough discomfort for me to decide not to run – hopefully a day or two or more of rest, plus Ibuprofen, stretching and massage will see the problem settle. It’s been a good run without injury, hopefully this one will not set me back too much.