February started off with a few more days on vacation in Fuerteventura, which maybe served as a way to kickstart a renewed focus on endurance, with a little elevation gain thrown in. Track&field: I decided to skip the last remaining indoor track competition in February. 2017 was pretty much a loss anyway, with times that…

“Month in review” posts keep me accountable. At least that’s the theory. January wasn’t a remarkable month. I had some health issues (a stomach bug that impacted me for the majority of a week) and the indoor track competitions I did turned out to be less than stellar as far as absolute performances are concerned….

I stopped writing “month in review”s in February because my statistics show that nobody ever visits this blog. “Why bother?”, I thought. But almost a year later I realize (once more) that by regularly scrutinizing my training (and related factors) in semi-public, that I might hold myself more accountable; and therefore make better progress towards…

February was a solid training month. Once more, I concentrated on quality track workouts, which means I didn’t get as much hill/trail running done as I’d want. Road, trail and track running: 43km on roads and/or stairs in 5h21 with 1669m of elevation; no real trail work whatsoever, 8 track trainings (of which 6 were…

January was a break-through month. My main focus finally moved from the achilles injury and recovery to actual running. I was able to successfully participate at three indoor track competitions. While the performances are much slower than my personal bests, I’m still pretty happy with them considering my age and how much of 2015 I…

Injuries & treatment: I had a lot of doctor visits and physiotherapy appointments in December, as we were coming to an end of the “treatment” phase of my achilles injury, and moving towards what will hopefully be a “maintenance” phase in 2016. December saw 7 doctor visits (for laser treatments and final ultra-sound check-ups) and…

Injuries & treatment: The achilles continued improving throughout November. I had one doctor visit and five physiotherapy appointments. Road, trail and track running: I had a week-long vacation at the end of November, and I had a few stressful days at work leading up to it. This means I had a fairly normal training load…

October saw five more doctor visits (regular appointments and laser treatments) and five physiotherapy appointments. Fortunately, this led to a marked improvement of the achilles tendon; although I still need to be careful not to attempt too much too soon (I might actually have done just that on one track training at the end of…

I had another four physiotherapy appointments and two doctor visits in September. Fortunately, my left Achilles tendon finally started to improve; which enabled me to incorporate some running in my training again. Road, trail and track running: I did a full “reboot” this time, barely running for two months and then restarting from zero. As…