The past week has been challenging. Not only was my hip and groin area not happy after the 100m race on Saturday, but the left achilles tendon was also pretty sore. I’d constantly get the feeling that the entire area was not stretched enough to cope with things as simple as walking after getting out of bed or up from a chair.
When faced with such troubles, it’s easy to fall into the trap of doing less and less because every supplemental thing seems to hurt more. Which is what I mostly did all week long, not least because for three out of five days I was working from a different office location and therefore could neither go for a lunch run nor attend evening track trainings. I had two kiné appointments during the week (Wednesday and Friday), which of course also had an impact.
On Saturday, I decided that I couldn’t continue on this downward spiral, and that some movement to get the blood flowing would probably be beneficial.
So I drove up to nearby Gehaansbierg (not wanting to subject myself to a hill climb almost out of the door) and did six loops – three clockwise, three anti-clockwise. With one loop being close to 900m, that translates to a little over 5k; which seemed sufficient for my first trail run this month.
| Distance: | 5,27 km |
| Time: | 37:25 |
| Avg Pace: | 7:06 min/km |
| Elevation Gain: | 65 m |
| Calories: | 450 C |
| Avg HR: | 153 bpm |
| Max HR: | 162 bpm |
I tried to keep my heart rate below 150, and this along with the ongoing achilles (and ankle mobility) issues made for a very slow pace.
After this jog in the woods, I did three cold water baths (submerging the feet and calves in cold water) of at least 10 minutes each. I’d already done two 25 minute sessions of Compex on the Achilles tendon in the morning, and did 75 more minutes in the evening. I also did the old eccentric calf exercise I’ve been trying to do semi-regularly over the past few weeks; but didn’t do at all the past week. It was painful at first.
After all this, I’m relieved to find that the achilles tendon seems to feel better now on Sunday morning than it did on Saturday.