Things will come to those who wait...

Duanington wrote: »

Progress is progress P, good to see it

Firedance wrote: »

we're not great on patience us runners are we but its going in the right direction & long may that continue.

Thanks guys, you are of course right, all progress is good. Just need to get my head in it, this is like the third time I've had to build up from scratch in the last 18 months and I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself. I need some motivation is all, I'm sure I'll find it soon.

The week that was:

Wednesday: 45 mins, 8.07 pace
Thursday: 42 mins, fit4life coaching, 8.25 pace
Friday: 45 mins real easy
Sunday: 37 mins, 8.30 pace

So a week that started so well, ended with a bit of a whimper. I decided to try three days in a row this week, so waited until Wednesday for my first run. All three runs went great, and apart from a little stiffness in the last five minutes of Fridays run the achilles held up.
Today I set out to do an hour easy but the achilles started complaining after 30 mins and I had to stop after 37 mins. Very frustrated as it's the worse it felt since I started back in January and first time I was forced to stop. I'm hoping it is just a little reaction and nothing comes from it. I had my massage course this weekend and spent many hours getting treatment and on my feet so maybe it was just a reaction to that. Also, the long days meant I didn't get all my rehab stuff in. Will reassess tomorrow.

I hope it's not a full relapse again, I'm likely to go off the rails and turn into a fat bastard!

Dubgal72 wrote: »

Hiya P, I feel your pain, so frustrating. Flat calf raises worked great for me last year with my achilles, then I progressed to full calf raise and heel drop when I was over the worst. IIRC flat calf raises because of where the strain was (higher up). Now I am on heel drops cos of bloody PF! All we want to do is run....and eat what we want but can't do one without the other You should ask Ronnie Delany on the main page about Achilles tips...;)

Hi DG, thanks for the comment. The annoying thing is the achilles feels 100% most of the time (including now!) and I have no pain doing the heel drops even with weight. It's just kicks up a stink now and again, hopefully it goes back to normal tomorrow. Like PF, it's a very insidious injury. As you say, all we want to do is run (and eat cake!).

RayCun wrote: »

Is all your running very slow? Maybe do some faster running as well mixed in - different kind of stress, and keep your form good?

Most of my running has been slow Ray, mainly because my basic fitness is so slow and also because I'm afraid that faster running will do some damage. I had actually a plan to do a light fartlek workout this week but I scratched it off after yesterday. Maybe I should try it anyway?

RayCun wrote: »

You'd know your injury better than me. Mine seems to be triggered more by distance/time than short bouts of faster running. I'm not doing anything too strenuous - ending with strides, or 5 minutes in zone one/9 in zone two/1 minute hard. Helps keep me sane if nothing else!

Good point, I did 5k today on the treddie and it felt pretty good. I'm kinda thinking maybe the grass is irritating it as the last few times it's flared up it was when I ran on the grass. How's your own injury Ray? I've seen fairly low miles on Strava for you, is it still holding you back or is it a motivation thing?

Monday: 5k before gym session on treddie.

Felt pretty good during this, and had a solid gym sessions afterwards.

Wednesday: 42 mins easy + 4x60m stride outs

Nice run on a wildly windy evening with a few of the lads from the club, achilles felt good during this. Did some 60m stride outs afterwards building up to about 90% max speed. Want to keep in touch with this from now on if achilles will allow, speed is still there.

Thursday: 4 mile easy

Rushed run this, trying to squeeze it in before I did some treatments, achilles not great and complaining a little.

Saturday: 40 mins @ 8 minute pace

Did this over a rolling route to test this achilles, and thankfully it felt great. One of the most enjoyable runs so far, felt good to run at my normal easy pace.

Sunday: 1hr easy

A big tester this for me, after last weeks run went wrong. Did another hilly route and the achilles was a little twingey on the hills but fie on the flat so happy with that. Longest run since the 1st week of November! Spent the rest of the day at the circus that is the Leinster Junior/Senior/Master champs, cheering on a few of the guys I coach.

So this was a good week and managed to get 5 days in which I'm delighted with. Hopefully I can do something similar this week, and from now I will keep the 5th day very short. Will also include some 80m accelerations this week to touch on close to top end speed. If I can string a few weeks like this together through March I may be able to look forward to summer track, being at the indoors today has lit a bit of fire about middle distance running again.

AuldManKing wrote: »

Great to see you making progress. The injury will be at the back of the mind soon.

Here's hoping anyway Alan!

Last two weeks:

Week starting Mon 14th March

Tuesday: 4 mile easy
Wednesday: 6.3 mile easy incl/5x80m strides
Thursday: 5.1 mile easy
Saturday: 3.4 mile easy

Bit of a disaster of a week, achilles was acting up a bit and while not painful, it was niggling the whole times. Had my massage course at the weekend and achilles was complaining during Saturday's run so binned Sunday's planned long run.

This week:

Monday: 4.2 mile easy
Tuesday: 5.2 mile easy
Wednesday: 6.7 miles incl/5x80m strides + 1k in 3.31
Saturday: 9 mile "long run"
Sunday: 5 mile easy

A better week, in around the 30 mile mark. Was very cautious at the start of the week but apart from a few niggles the achilles held up well. Wednesday I went a bit mad and jumped in with my friend who was doing 1k reps and did one rep in 3.31. I had two thoughts afterwards:

1. That was a bit unnecessary and silly
2. It felt VERY hard!

Meant to get out Friday but started a new job and the day got away from me. Saturday, the plan was to go out and see how I felt and try for something a bit longer. As it happens I felt pretty damn good so did 6 miles with my brother and then tacked on an extra 3 miles solo. Very windy and along the coast was a killer, but I felt good. Then did another 5 mile easy today along the Boyne boardwalk, achilles was a little niggly, a reaction to yesterdays longer effort, but manageable at the same time.

So I am planning on running the Mountpleasant 5k tomorrow as it is one of my favourite races, but I won't race flat out and instead I'm going to pace one of my Fit4lifers who is hoping to break 23 mins. I should just about be up to the task.
That is dependent on how the achilles feels in the morning after the last two days.

It's hard to make any plans with an injury like this as it's so temperamental but I would like to tick off a few 30-35 mile weeks over the next while and then think about adding in some fartlek or light tempo work. The real challenge will be getting in that 6th day, will try 4 days in a row this week and see how that goes.

El Caballo wrote: »

Not leaving you go that easily;) How are things progressing P?

Ha, thanks man. Things are not going great but I'm beyond caring at this stage! Achilles ain't bad but knee is giving me grief so taking a break at the min. No racing or structured training planned but it is what it is, enthusiasm is gone with all the injuries but may return in the future!

tang1 wrote: »

See you lost household bragging rights yesterday, hope the knee is clearing up for you?

Definitely wouldn't be bragging about that result anyway tang, shocking stuff. Knee is grand now, just trying to build (again!). Hope you're own training is going well.

For some reason I felt I should post some sort of end of year update here. I'm not sure why as I don't use this log anymore and have no intentions of using it in 2017, but it's a tradition so I will keep it up. I don't really post a lot here anymore and a lot of logs that I used to read are not active, plus the main forum has little interest to it anymore. I think it's indicative of the decline of the forum in this mad world of social media.

If I had to sum up 2016 in a sentence, I would say a year to forget. It was without doubt the worst year of my so called running "career". I'm sure anyone who read this log earlier in the year was sick of my constant whinging about injuries (and I'm sick of it myself), but the year was defined by a series of pretty horrible injuries. I started 2016 trying to fix a rather nasty achilles injury and my first week in January consisted of a grand total of 5 miles running. But I managed to be patient and build up slowly. I was still having some issues with the achilles and the healing was slow, but by May I was up to about 35 miles a week and feeling alright. Then I picked up a knee injury and a chest infection which cost me three weeks.

However as I had become accustomed to, I build back up again and by the middle of July I was up to 45 miles a week with the odd session. I also did my first race in 8 months, my clubs 4 mile race. It didn't go well with the lack of miles and a slightly overzealous first mile coming back to haunt me and I finished nearly 3 minutes off my PB. Still I was actually feeling OK and training well. 2 weeks later however out of the blue I did a run and had some significant discomfort in my left shin, just about the ankle bone and along the tibia. I iced it and hoped for the best but when I ran the following day the pain was excruciating and I had to stop. The pain was so severe I was convinced I had a stress fracture. But after doing a little self treatment and getting some advice from a therapist teaching on my course we came to the agreement that it was tibial periostitis (basically the outside layer of the bone, the periostium was inflamed).

To be honest this hit me pretty bad. I know it's only a sport but I was fed up of injuries and was feeling very, very sorry for myself and felt I would never get back to the level I was at. Normally with injuries I am pretty proactive but this time I just said screw it and forgot about running. I didn't bother getting treatments and just left it alone. For the guts of 7 weeks (excluding one of two attempts to jog which resulted in me having extreme discomfort after 1-2 minutes running) I didn't run a step. I really was ready to stop and call it a day. But a few people in the club took me aside and talked to me, and eventually I decided to try and get back.

I got several treatments done on the shin and started back with an extremely conservative programme. Basically for nearly a month I did a walk/jog programme starting with 15-30 seconds jogging with walking breaks. Even with this I still had some pain and discomfort in the shin. Still, after about 5 weeks I was up to about 30 minutes 3-4 days a week. I was also back in the gym doing S +C work. Another very patient build up and by mid November I was up to 40 miles a week with some light sessions thrown in. Around this time I was also breaking in a new pair of custom orthotics, which will hopefully help with some of the injuries. The shin is still not 100% but I am able to manage it mostly with self treatment.

It was painful standing at the sideline of all the cross country races but at least I was training. Since then I've been managing to get some sort of consistent training in with only a few minor blips. I was intending to race on the Sunday before Christmas but a bad chest infection meant I had to scrap it and I took 4 days off. Then in the days before Christmas I did a run in Monaghan over hillier ground that I'm used to and seemed to have strained my soleus. Then in what was probably not my smartest move I ran a 5k on St. Stephen's day which has left my calf quite sore so I'm currently giving it a few days off to settle down. The 5k went OK even if the time was embarrassingly slow (18.48) but it felt great just to be back running in some sort of competitive event. I know some people just love running for the sake of running and aren't that fussed on racing, but while I do enjoy training it's racing that really gets me going. I've missed that more than anything over the last 13 months.

So that's where I am now, I hope this calf thing is nothing serious and I can continue in this streak of relatively consistent (if often low quality/quantity) training. Looking forward to 2017 I am not making any plans, I just want to able to enjoy training again and get fit enough to do myself justice in some races. That's the biggest thing for me from the last year, the enjoyment has gone out of training for me. When you are worried about your shin/achilles/calves on every run, waiting for the pain or niggle to kick in, it sucks a bit of the fun out of it and I struggled to get out of the door on a lot of runs recently. I have targets in my head with regards to races and times but there is no point worrying about them as I can't plan that far ahead. I love running and just want to get back to enjoying my sport.

If you managed to read through that wall of self pitying nonsense then I feel sorry for you. Hope everyones training is going well and onwards to 2017. Happy New Year!