I’m trying to ease back into more regular updates. In the grand scheme of things, a blog outlining the athletic achievements and other little things in the life of a mostly sedentary former sprinter might not make for appealing reading. But if everyone followed that …
I had my final physical therapy session yesterday. I received two treatments per week, eight in total. While both the doctor and my physical therapist didn’t explicitly tell me to stop running, I dialed down both the number and intensity of physical activity over the past month. Part of that was a precaution – no use subjecting the achilles tendon to additional strain while it’s also getting treatment to hopefully improve it; but part was because I never felt too good about doing more, anyway. Some days the weather was crappy, other days I still had some lingering soreness in the areas around the achilles tendon. Most days, regardless of activity level, I felt tired and burned out; which means that despite my best intentions I did almost no cross training (weight training, indoor biking, etc.)
Overall, I think the achilles tendon is better now than it was a month ago. Unfortunately, it’s not perfect yet. I have an MRI lined up, but unfortunately the earliest I could get an appointment is two months from now. Which leaves me between a rock and a hard place: I could be cautious and stop most if not all running until the MRI (and lose a lot of fitness, which could lead to trouble down the line because then I’d need to be really careful when eventually ramping up my training from a standstill). Or I could throw caution to the wind, continue training with some lingering pain, and potentially either worsen the condition of the achilles tendon, get another partial tear (like in 2000), or worse. No matter which route I choose, two months from now I might look back and wish I’d chosen the other one: if I stop all training and then the MRI shows that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong I’ll be just as unhappy with having wasted two months than if I keep running and worsen the injury.
I suppose I could also just cut my losses, toss my running shoes, bury my ambitions, and adopt a sedentary lifestyle. Somehow, I don’t think I’d be happy with that.
So where do I go from here? I guess that for the remainder of the year and heading into 2015 I will try to maintain a reasonable volume of exercise. This should include both relaxed (long) runs to build my overall endurance and heart/lung capacity; but also high intensity sessions that better approximate the level of strain I’d have to endure during races or other challenging goals. At the same time, there’s definitely room for improvement in regular maintenance: strengthening my core muscles, working on my running form, doing preventive maintenance on hot spots (weak spots in muscles), etc.
With my left foot altogether not happy, I should probably be doing low volume for a while. But after three days of rest, I had the itch to do some meaningful training; especially since I received confirmation on Wednesday that I’m now fully signed up …
I started track&field in 1987, and specialized in sprints more than twenty years ago. After my semi-official retirement in early 2006 followed some years where I didn’t compete at all (2006-2008, 2010). In the past few years, I occasionally came out of retirement, but most …
November started off with a nice amount of volume and intensity, but I had to scale back somewhat during the second half because of recurring achilles tendon inflammation.
Track trainings:In November, I did 8 track trainings (two per week). Unfortunately, only three sessions were good sprint workouts on the track. Three trainings were mostly indoors and two times I was heading to the Rollingergrund stairs because I didn’t want the strain of track running.
Road&Trail Running: I ran on fifteen days in November, although there was a notable difference between the first half and second half of the month. The total for the month was 138km, and I covered considerably more elevation than in other months, at almost 4400m of positive altitude change. The nature of runs was pretty diverse as well: 5 normal trail runs, 1 trail run with more elevation changes, 3 runs on mostly flat terrain and paved streets, 3 “Kosakestee” stair sessions, 1 hill session on cobble stones, and two more extreme trail runs on the “Saarschleife” with around 500m elevation gain each time (in less than 10km).
Walking: I did a fairly small amount of walking. 29km on the month, mostly limited to short lunch-grab walks or brief commutes either because I didn’t take the car or couldn’t find convenient parking and had to walk a bit.
Indoor cycling: Almost nothing: one session, 10 minutes.
Average body weight: I kept my body weight mostly stable. The average was 82.4kg, down just a tad from 82.5kg the month before. Body fat was exactly the same, at 14.9%. (All numbers according to my not necessarily very accurate cheap scale.)