Last week - turned out to be a big week

That was a hard week, in fact I covered the third most kilometres in a week (51 km) since I started GPS recording my runs (the only bigger weeks include marathon events!). Four runs in all capped off with a long slow Sunday run (24.9 km) that left my limping. With 6 weeks left until Berlin I had to make sure I upped my time on my feet in line with the training plan, and at this point try to figure out my likely race day target pace through testing out higher paces at the end of the longer runs.

I now know much more about my current state and can project forwards to Berlin where I will need to curb my enthusiasm for sure. It is clear that I am not where I was before I attended Berlin last time, not really a surprise given the broken year of training, but I am happy at least having assessed and set my range over the last 10 days. From here it is about staying consistent and staying injury free. For the first time in a while I am doing lots of extra post run recovery stuff - even putting myself through the 'fun' of icing my legs (!!).

In terms of the challenge I have set myself of two marathons in a month in aid of Diabetes UK - this last week has framed the size of the task all to clearly. It will very likely be a very painful experience, but now at least I am readying myself properly for it mentally as well as physically.

Kinetic Revolution - 30-day challenge

So now the half marathon is out of the way I am really getting on with shaking up my running before the winter so that I can get a really good training block under my belt. If you have read this blog (and to be fair why would you have) you will note the number and frequency of injuries and niggles ruining this run or that, so I have taken up the Kinetic Revolution 30-day challenge as an injury preventing, form adapting, run improving strategy.

Who? - basically in my wanderings around the interweb I came across the Kinetic Revolution site (headed up by James Dunne, a sports rehab therapist) and their run training video offerings.

What? - I'm only on day 2 so I don't know exactly what it will all be about, but it is clearly designed to strengthen runners around common areas of weakness / injury. It claims to be 10-15minutes a day following a guided set of drills, exercises and stretches. Given my inability to single leg balance for 20 seconds last night, I'm taking it that I need this more than I thought.

Where? - wherever I can fit in the sessions, probably at home on the yoga mat I pinched from my wife.

When? - probably each evening, though to be fair 10-15minutes shouldn't be too hard to fit in earlier in the day.

Why? - having dabbled and never really followed up on the videos and well written short articles I thought it would be sensible to see where more structure to my run training would take me. After all I have never really (ever) done enough stretching, core or mobility work around training sessions.

I will try to report back with how I get on.

Sunshine rolling

Feeling good today, I have ridden the bike (my wife's now old bike) to work and back two days on the trot - I am indeed a fair weather cyclist. I haven't exactly been thumping along, between strange bike, busy cycle ways (all those other fair weather cyclists out too, damn it), and the lack of fitness. It has been great to get back into an old pattern and I am already resolving to keep it going in my quest to regain all around on the move fitness.

Happily my knee hasn't grumbled about the cycling, and although it still isn't better I do hope that it will sort itself out soon. Everywhere I look at the moment there is another article on stretching so I have no excuses not to be doing it and getting things stabilised. Not sure when I'll threaten my knee with another run, but I will be on the move and trying to heal it with plenty of active recovery.

Sunny, warm, gentle breeze - perfect day for commuting on your bike here in Wales ;-)

Stop reminding me - lost fitness

So today I got on the bike (my wife's bike actually, mine is in need of major repair) and figured it'd be fun. Now it was fun don't get me wrong, the weather is fabulous this morning and the trail was quiet. However, at the nice long stretch where you can see several hundred metres ahead of you I decided to unleash the canons (arms = guns, legs = canons? never mind), and then a minute later rolled along having discovered another muscular change that has occurred since last year... I have lost, for the want of a better phrase, my 'top end grunt'. My quads, which have been extremely tight of late and implicated somewhat heavily in the knee issue story, are certainly also lacking in sprint strength and general power.

The reflection / introspection of this last week and a bit about the loss of stretching routine and bringing that back with rigour has now extended itself to other forms of exercise. I used to post blog entries about weeks where I had cycled daily, swum, run and rowed in a busy mix. Quite where all that went I'm not 100% sure, though much of it is work and the kids it can't be all of the reasons why I don't do the variety these days. This weekends quest is now to work out where these things can be improved - if only because I love dropping the hammer on the bike and roaring along sometimes.

Sunny, warm, light breeze and the promise from the weather guesser forecaster that it is set fair for the next few days. Right off for another stretch then loads of that afore mentioned work to do.

Footnote - May = a whopping 17.1 km run (!), an injury, a marathon race DNS (did not start), several trips to the physiotherapist, lots of planning for when I am fit again (and plans to get fit in the first place), and so I don't have to do much in June to top its proceeding month exercise wise.

Tuesday tightness - more power to the stretches

"Right, okay, right that's it!!"... I am going to go stretch crazy and from here on, I could well be found randomly at any time stretching. My knee has not responded at all well to my running on it, and was better for rolling and stretching yesterday before deciding to make it's big protest felt this morning. It used to be the case that I would go through a stretch routine a couple of times a day when I was rowing, then somewhere along the way I fell out of the habit.

Looking back on it the drop in stretching came initially when I managed to exacerbate a calve injury by over doing it, and then was compounded by reading those articles decrying certain forms of stretching before exercise (seems I must have subconsciously read it as "all stretching is bad" - dumbo!).

I will be bendier than a bendy Yoga person - ahem, perhaps not that bendy I am a lanky 6ft2 after all
"Silhouette Girls Doing Yoga" - Image courtesy of sattva / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So I am just going to stretch until I get all bendy again and hope that my knee decides shut up with the pain when it has everything around it super loose. I have to say that the very first time I went through my old routine again this morning I could feel tightness and pulling where I don't ever recall feeling any, which of course tells me something pretty major. My quads were like rocks and took the longest time to ease off under tension and I used to have great mobility through that stretch (it used to be the back of leg stretch that would leave me whimpering). Somewhere along the way an adaptation for the worse has happened and I need to put it right.

In a timely twist of fate an excellent blog that I read "50after40" posted a great video called 'Hip workout details and my first video' - which for a first ever video outing was awesome and contains some great moves that I hope to build into an expanded stretching / strengthening regimen. I reccomend you go take a look and enjoy the rock out to the soundtrack too :-)

Overcast, breezy, persistent rain, and a complete reverse of yesterdays weather. Now where is a quiet spot in the office I can go stretch?

Note - I should of course once again heed my own previous advice - 'Joys of stretch' - if I was so wise back in July 2011 what happened?