Looking back at December, it was a slightly below average month. There was some regularity with my road & trail runs, but in general I was trying to keep the intensity moderate so as not to worsen the Achilles tendon. Track trainings: With the holidays …
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 …
It was 4am on Sunday morning, and I couldn’t sleep. Since I wasn’t exactly feeling full of energy, I sat down in front of the computer and continued the mindless task of manually importing some of my old activity logs from Garmin Connect into Strava. In between cursing at my old Garmin 405 for having less than stellar GPS accuracy in those 2010 and 2011 activities; I realized something I’d almost forgotten: I had absolutely no endurance in 2010, and in between 2010 and 2012 I was doing quite a lot of walking before I was able to successfully do my first long distance runs of 10km and more. Which means that both my half-marathon as well as my decent sprint achievements in 2013 were built on a reasonable base of long, slow movement that gradually built up my body to withstand both the continued pounding of a long race as well as the aggressive acceleration in a sprint competition.
So here I am in 2014. I’ve been plagued by injuries because my expectations were exceeding my fitness, and my upper limit for endurance runs seems to be down below the 10km level again. While I sometimes like to pretend otherwise, 37 is starting to feel quite old in terms of athletics and sprinting.
And yet, I am doing very little walking these days. I haven’t even been doing proper long runs anymore; because my renewed interest in mountains and hills led me to concentrate on hard workouts that were probably way outside of my current fitness level. 2014 was very much split between high intensity and injury breaks.
So on Sunday afternoon, I set out to do a reasonable hike in the forest. I walked 12km, and it was a nice feeling to move at a comfortable level of exhaustion. I wasn’t beat up, and my achilles tendon wasn’t in pain.
All throughout the hike, my thoughts kept revolving around the the single word “reset”, and what implications such a “reset” would have on my athletic pursuits. What if I have been digging myself into a hole by chasing goals that are serious enough to require hard training efforts; while at the same time I’ve been compromising my base fitness by not doing enough groundwork? The proverb says that “we must learn to walk before we can run”. Maybe I have been doing too much running and not enough walking.
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 …
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 of my recent performances have hardly been something for the record books. Sprinting (and training for it) has been a large influence in my life; and continues to be something I feel passionate about. However, over the course of the last few months I’ve had no track training that was without pain in my left achilles; and increasingly it’s becoming a pattern that if I do a sprint training one evening, I can’t run or even walk without a limp the next day. This is neither enjoyable nor healthy. Just like in 2006 when I put a stop to my athletics career for the first time, doctor visits and physiotherapy haven’t brought a significant improvement (the pain always returns with the next athletic effort). So I suppose it’s time to reevaluate.
For a while already, I’ve been thinking about athletic challenges that go beyond a 100m sprint on a track. I’m increasingly drawn to runs that involve nature, and would love to be more active in the mountains. I also seem to suffer less after 10km on a trail – even with 500m of elevation change – than running a handful of 300m repeats on the track. So from here on out, I hope to re-orient my athletic pursuits towards the longer distances, in the hope that I will be less prone to injuries. I’m not closing the door entirely on track activities, but I suppose it will be healthier for me to trade the red or blue of a synthetic track for the brown, green or grey of the great outdoors.
Like most people I’m living a life that’s centered around sitting in an office for eight hours a day. I tremendously enjoy reading about the athletic pursuits of ultra runners, climbers and adventurers who get to spend hours, if not days, out in the mountains. I’ve always held the belief that it’s unhealthy to just “consume” other people’s achievements; and important to get involved in the sport and build your own experiences. From here on out, this blog will hopefully see more activity.
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 …
As usual, my forays into the Haard natural reserve start with a quick run up the road from our house, and then into the forest. The first 2km already hit you with 100m of elevation. Next, I decided to deviate from my standard route and …
I finally managed to get back into a somewhat reasonable routine in October. I still had to fight an uncooperative achilles tendon (which is still inflamed, and tends to worsen whenever I run faster on it).
Track trainings: Winter season typically starts in early October, so I was able to join the team right when they restarted with fundamentals. The first half of October we did more general fitness than other years, before reverting to some of the traditional programs in the second half. Overall, we did 4 sessions that were more general in nature, 2 traditional track trainings and 3 Rollingergrund stair sessions; for a total of 9 track trainings. In other words, I went every single Tuesday and Thursday.
Road&Trail Running: I did quite a bit of running in October. During the first two and a half work weeks I went on quite a few lunch runs (while trying to keep the distance and effort reasonable); and then branched out to do trail runs on the weekends the second half of the month. I ended up doing 14 runs , for a total of 123km. I climbed 1317m of elevation.
Walking: More running during lunch breaks means less walking. I ended up with a total of 47.6km
Indoor cycling: Two sessions, for a total of 50 minutes.
Average body weight: The aftermath of the September trip was that my average went up again, to 82.5kg and 14.9% of body fat.
I knew September was going to be a difficult month training-wise. because of our wedding and going on a wedding trip. Since we were doing a road trip to Scotland, I ended up driving a lot; and feeling quite shot in the rare moments when …