VLM training week 7

Enthused by my first proper run outside for weeks, I was back in the gym at 7am on Monday morning (16^th Feb) for the first run of a scheduled recovery double (2 miles am / 7 miles pm). I decided to split the miles more evenly because whilst my legs were a bit tired after a 78 mile week, I was ticking along easily at 6:30 pace and thought it would be a bit daft to get sweaty and showered for the sake of 2 miles. So I went for 5 miles in the morning and 6.2 miles in the evening – adding a couple of extra miles to the scheduled amount for the day. I have been feeling pretty fresh after my recovery run days – and seem to be recovering more quickly. I need to wear my heart rate monitor to bed to test this theory out (but slightly worried about my marriage).

On the way to the gym on Monday evening I checked in with Phil the physio who seemed pleased with the knee – no swelling, no pain, no problem. Phil filmed me doing some clumsy hopping about and drills in the car park and told me I needed to build more drills into my training if I wanted to strengthen things up and avoid getting injured again. Good advice I am sure – just need to find somewhere to do the drills that won’t lead to embarrassment.

I nearly went to the club intervals session on Tuesday but ended up working too late so I did my scheduled interval session on the treadmill. I have been tending to prefer more fartlek style reps on the treadmill (it feels daft walking) so I went for an hour of running – alternating between 6:50 and 5:20 pace as the songs on my headphones changed. I set the playlist up so that the rest songs were short, and the effort songs were longer and at the right tempo. Good session – and the 10 miles passed in bang on an hour.

Wednesday was another recovery double (3 mile / 7 mile) – but, again, I added a bit extra on the morning to top up to just over 6 miles, and then tried an open air 6.5 mile recovery run home in the evening. It felt good to be outside again – although it felt a bit too hard at times on the hills.

Thursday was supposed to be a 12 mile progression run but given the week was getting a bit high mileage, I dropped a couple of miles in exchange for a hard treadmill session. I set the treadmill off at around 6:20 pace and progressed through my threshold zone to a hard, near race-effort last couple of miles at around 5:25 pace (148bpm) – finishing the 10 miles in 58:40. I was pretty shattered at the end but it felt good – especially when the young lad limbering up competitively on the treadmill next to me caught sight of the 'end of session stats' on the treadmill screen.

Friday went basically the same as Wednesday with a double recovery run: morning on the treadmill, evening on the roads and trails. Again, I over-ran on the scheduled miles – just over 11 in total compared to 8 on the schedule.

The plan for Saturday was a short early morning 5 mile run, giving time for some decent recovery ahead of Sunday’s scheduled 24 mile long run. But, with the kids having a rare weekend off sport / music etc, the opportunity to give the knee a hard tempo test at a parkrun seemed too good to miss.  I didn’t want to race at 100% so I decided to go to Hillsborough rather than Endcliffe to avoid it all getting too competitive.  The run went well and I managed to drag my tired legs round in 17:18 – running all but the first half a lap on my own. I was a bit disappointed with the time – knowing that I would have been a lot closer to sub-17 before Xmas added a few pounds that I haven’t shaken off yet. The phrase that went round in my head as I warmed down was ‘a bit fitter but a bit fatter’ – this marathon training thing makes you very hungry and I am probably over-compensating. Not got long to get that under control now – got about 2 kgs to lose to get to race weight (69kg) before the big day.

Obviously Saturday night involved a 50^th birthday party with loads of beer, cake, chocolate and cheese. So much for self-control then!

Sunday morning involved some pathetic attempts to rehydrate ahead of a head-clearing 19 mile jaunt with Deb down the transpennine trail from Rotherham to Rother Valley and back. Deb  jogged the last mile to her mum’s house to hit the 20 sub-8:00 miles in her schedule, but I peeled off down the canal and picked the pace up as planned. I was tired but found it pretty easy to progress to around 6:20 pace in the freezing rain (just get it done), before jogging the last half mile to Deb’s mum’s house for boiled eggs, bread and soup. An evening nap was required at 5:30 before the traditional Sunday evening family ritual of homemade pizza (blue cheese, red onion and hellishly hot habanero peppers) and ‘The Voice’.

And, so another week of returning optimism with just over 85 miles clocked, and some decent quality work too. Plan for next week is much the same, but with a proper preparatory race on Sunday (Norton 9). The Grindleford Gallop looms large the following Sunday. I was not going to risk it, but maybe I could actually control the adrenaline and do it at 95% without breaking something? I mean what could go wrong....

VLM Training Week 6 - the come back

Having discovered last week that a few decent tunes might enable me to tolerate the mind-numbing tedium of training on a treadmill, I decided to stick to the treadmill for the week but attempt a return to my marathon training schedule. So, Monday was a warm-up on the bike, followed by 6 miles easy recovery on the treadmill (inclined like all the runs this week to protect the knee).

Having worked too late in the evening, I struggled to sleep on Monday night so hit the gym at 7am for the first of an unscheduled double. The lack of sleep had left me faded mentally, but the easy run the day before meant my legs were fresh. A quick 5.5 miles later (6:10 pace) I was on my way to work feeling a good deal better. The evening session started with a 1 mile jog up the hill to the gym (wow real running) followed by a hard 10 mile fartlek – alternating between 5:30, 6:00 and 6:30 pace to complete the 10 miles bang on the hour.

I was traveling to London on Wednesday so hit the gym at 7am again for an easy 7 mile recovery. A few miles less than scheduled, but my legs were feeling the extended miles of the previous day. To be honest, the fatigue was strangely reassuring – like I was actually training for a marathon and not just nursing an injury.

After a few beers and a curry on the Wednesday night with an old mate in London, followed by a 6:50am train to my breakfast meeting, I see off from my work meeting at 10:30am and had a suited and booted 2 mile jog down Marylebone Rd to catch the train. By the time I hit St Pancras I was pretty much in full flight and realised I was probably going a bit too quick for the crowds… “what’ve you nicked mate?”

Typically, the train home terminated at Chesterfield after being delayed on route, so I ended up on the later train anyway. I managed to get enough work out of the way to get to the gym on the way home. The scheduled 10-mile progression went as planned, with a hard 5:20 last mile that had me properly holding on. The knee was amazingly still pain free – unlike my right nipple, which was making a right mess of my white running t-shirt.

Friday was supposed to be a hard hill session but I opted for an am / pm double instead – thinking I might try Rother Valley parkrun on Saturday, or maybe a hard treadmill session if not. The two 6-milers passed without incident at around 6:30 pace.

Parkrun didn’t fit with family life on Saturday morning, so I returned to the treadmill later in the morning whilst Isla was at her swimming lesson (in the same building!) I was feeling good after the easy runs the day before, so I set the treadmill on a 1.5% incline and 6:00 pace. I wanted to try an experiment: a longish fartlek with the slowest pace being marathon pace and the fastest at 5K pace. I wanted to see if I could trick my mind into enjoying the ‘rest’ at mere marathon pace. It worked pretty well – and the hard 9 miles passed quickly at an average 5:49 pace. I realised I was actually starting to enjoy the control that the treadmill gave me over my training.

Sunday was pencilled in as the big ‘road test’ day. Having had the requisite pain free week, I was going to try a fair few miles on the flat to see how well the knee had recovered. I had a 14 miler in the schedule so I decided to split it 7 miles on the flat paths of Attercliffe and Newhall (offering plenty of loop back options if needed), with 7 to 8 miles on the treadmill straight afterwards.

Despite some fine beer and food on the Saturday night (our 19^th anniversary!), I wasn't feeling too bad at 8am as I parked up at Kelham Island (having driven down the hill). I set off along the flat road with some trepidation as I was not sure whether my knee was already registering some discomfort. But a mile or so in, I was feeling fine so I wound the pace up to get my heart rate up towards 130bpm (6:21 pace). I held the effort easily for the next 3 miles and when it became clear that the knee was not flaring up – and following a pit stop at Costa to, ahem, lose a bit of weight – I picked the effort up to around 139bpm (a few bpm below marathon heart rate) for the last 3 miles (a respectable 6:12, 6:03, and 5:57).

I was enjoying being outside again and running without pain, so it was hard to stop. But, common sense prevailed and within 10 minutes or so I was back on the treadmill, incline set, topping up the day’s mileage to 15 miles at easy effort (125bpm – 6:30 pace on a 1.5% incline).

One of the reasons I had wanted to get back out on the road again with my heart rate monitor was so that I could get a VO2 Max estimate from my Garmin 620. I am sure it isn’t as accurate as a lab test, but I have found it is generally comparable with previous results. In other words, when I have been in good shape, the watch has guessed my VO2 max at 64, when I have had time off with injury, it has dropped down to 62.

My watch had already uploaded the data by the time I walked in the gym due to the fancy Bluetooth connection between watch and tablet, and the tablet connecting to the gym wifi from the road outside. I was amazed to see the VO2 max estimate on garmin connect reading 65. I am not sure whether the watch was flattering me in return for its first decent run out for weeks, but I was happy with that. All of that bloody uphill treadmill running might have actually improved my fitness. That would be something.

So, fingers crossed, I might just be back in the hunt for a decent marathon time. Let’s see how the knee feels in the morning and what the physio has to say tomorrow evening. And, then let's hope I can return this blog to being about warm-up races and hard miles on the trails and roads.

VLM Training Week 5

After a weekend of decent (treadmill) miles and no knee pain, I started the week with a reasonable amount of optimism. I decided to start introducing some road miles by gradually extending my weekday 1 mile jog uphill to the gym by a mile or so every day. I also resolved to get better at doing all of my daily strength exercises, which had lapsed a bit.

So on Monday, I added an extra mile or so, and had a decent cross-training / treadmill session totalling 7 miles of running. Tuesday morning was painfree, so again, I ran 3 road miles and decided to replicate the usual club interval session on the treadmill. This meant doing 5  x 1500m at around 5:20 pace off 90s walking rest. I nervously set the treadmill at 0% incline for the reps and despite failing to programme the treadmill right, got the session done OK – 10 miles for the day felt like marathon training again. I was pleased that the knee hadn’t flared as a result of running on the flat – encouraging for London if not for the very hilly Grindleford Gallop, a 21-mile target race which is starting to loom large in the calendar.

Wednesday morning was pain free, so that evening’s run was again extended – aiming for a decent 4 or 5 mile loop before finishing off in the gym. Four miles into the run having gone down a few gentle inclines, the bloody knee started to flare up. In a rare moment of common sense, I stopped running straight away and walked to the gym for a few miles on the bike instead. My experience thus far is that the bike loosens the knee up and seems to have a renewing effect.

My guess is that the hard session on the flat on Tuesday coupled with a few miles of undulation on the road 24 hours later had aggravated the knee. Whilst I am not a doctor, I decided that the injury had probably been on the way to being better, but that I had pushed it too hard too soon and set it back a bit.

The knee felt fine on Thursday morning – supporting my analysis(?) – but I was nervous after the pain the day before so stuck mainly to the cross-trainer and bike (10 miles) with a mile on the road and two miles on the treadmill. I continued the cautious approach on Friday with a decent few miles on the bike but introduced some quality work with some horrible hills (just over 6 miles). The intention was to get my glutes firing a bit more - it worked!

Whilst I was starting to feel optimistic again, I was scarred by the experience of the knee flaring up a few days before. And, I was seriously worried that my sanity would not survive much more bloody treadmill running in the gym. What if this was it until London? And, what if my bizarre training routine, whilst pain free, was actually just hindering my recovery and I would get a few miles into the marathon and have to pull out?

On Saturday morning, I went to watch Lola representing Sheffield in the South Yorks Schools XC Champs. It should have been a proud morning for her but she had a terrible run – feeling stuffed-up with cold, and nauseous before and during the race. She limped home mid-pack holding her stomach and looking thoroughly miserable. On the basis of previous form, she should have been up with the leaders. She was gutted. I had run around watching the race a fair bit, and my knee was just registering a bit of discomfort - just enough to darken my mood further. Mardy household. Shit day.

I managed a few miles in the gym on Saturday afternoon with some cross-training, but my heart wasn’t in it.

On Saturday night, I was dreading the tedium of the treadmill the next day. What could I do to make it bearable? I decided to try a bit of music. I have never got on with music whilst running – it upsets my rhythm and I like to hear what’s going on around me (not that this is as important when the loudest thing in the room is a student grunting dramatically whilst lifting weights). I also especially dislike music whilst I am working hard as I focus on my breathing patterns. The final nail in the coffin of music accompanied running is if I have to adjust the headphones every 30 seconds because they are falling out.

Nevertheless, anything is worth a try. After a bit of sifting through the various pairs of headphones we have accumulated over the years, I found a fetching pair of pink headphones that looped round my ears and sounded OK. I also found an old headband of Deb’s that seemed to keep the earphones in my ears. To be honest, I looked a right idiot, but if it got me through the session...

Next up was choice of music. To get round upsetting my rhythm I set about building up a Spotify playlist of songs that were either 90 or 180 beats per minute. My cadence is pretty consistent at 180 steps per minute and I figured if the music has the same tempo that this would work better.

In the gym I self-consciously put my silly headband on and got on the treadmill for the first 6 miles of my Sunday run, which I had decided to split am / pm to aid recovery and avoid tedium. Whilst a few of the tracks I had chosen didn’t work at all, the trial was a resounding success. Time seemed to pass about three times a fast and I retuned homed a lot chirpier.

Most of Sunday daytime was spent watching Lola and Isla in the 3^rd of the South Yorks Indoor Series at EIS. Both girls had great days – with Lola smashing her long jump PB with a 4.37m leap (the length of a transit van!) and doing well enough in all of her events to hold 2^nd position overall in the South Yorks league (out of over 50 U13s). The girl in first place is probably the best multi-eventer in the country for her age so no shame in 2^nd place! Debbie did her first truly long marathon training run with a 17.5 mile undulating effort at around 7:40 pace (20 seconds a mile quicker than I had prescribed!)

With a good day behind me, I hit the gym, headphones on, and knocked out the second half of my Sunday run - a 10 mile inclined progression in 1:03 (averaging 6:18 pace). I had completed a 50 mile week – with nearly 90% of the miles uphill on a treadmill. I was amazed I was still sane.

VLM Training Week 4

The Marrakesh Half Marathon was a great experience but Monday (26th Jan) started pretty well how I expected - with a sore knee. The whole day was spent traveling back to Sheffield with a 4 hour flight from Morocco followed by a 3 hour drive from Stansted. No time or appetite for running really.

I couldn't bear to even look at my marathon training plan (and still haven't) so I am not sure what I was supposed to be doing. But whatever it was, I wasn't doing it. I was driving up the motorway with the ache in my left knee telling me that my chances of doing well at London were passing as fast as the traffic on the other side of the A1.

On Tuesday, I woke up with hardly any knee pain at all and I started to pull myself together. This is going to get better I told myself. I had been doing my quad and stability exercises pretty religiously and definitely felt stronger. But what was I going to do about my fading fitness and speed endurance whilst I waited?

I went through the list of things that caused the pain and, I suspected, would prolong the injury: long runs, running downhill, smacking the tarmac. I then went through the list of things that would help the injury get better: active recovery, massage, exercises, enough protein, no booze. I then went through the options I could try to stay fit - cycling, cross-training, maybe even running uphill? I processed all this in my head during Tuesday and by the end of the day I was jogging one mile (uphill) to rejoin the S10 gym, which is basically at the back of my house.

My session was pretty obvious given my situation - tape the knee up for extra support, warm up and down on the bike to get the knee nice and loose without knocking it about, attempt to run uphill for a few miles on the treadmill, but plan to move to the cross-trainer if the pain got above 3/10. The session went well and whilst the treadmill was tedious as hell, I was actually running with only a very dull ache. I knocked out a pretty quick 5 miles on a 2% incline at around 6:20 pace. I was tempted to carry on, but decided that I had probably tested enough for the day. I did my exercises that evening with a new determination. Might just be able to pull this round...

I woke on Wednesday feeling good and whilst I got a couple of flickers of pain as I walked downhill to work, I was pretty confident that I had got a recovery plan that might work: carry on with the exercises, stay on the inclines but gradually reduce the gradient down to flat, introduce more road miles as things get better. Be prepared for it to take weeks. I jogged to the gym again, warmed everything up on the bike a bit, and then hit the treadmill for a 9 mile run. I set the incline to 2% again, and the pace to about 6:40 knowing that this would feel easy at first, but reasonably testing towards the end. Jesus, the miles passed slowly, but, again, only a dull ache in the knee. Definitely feeling better.

On Thursday, I was due to have my left, rearmost molar tooth out. And to my surprise the dental hospital phoned me and offered me an appointment earlier in the day. The dentists had got to work, but loads of patients had cancelled because of 'the snow'. Somewhat obsessively, I realised that this meant I could get the tooth out, spend a couple of hours recovering, and then hit the treadmill again. 

After 30 minutes of feeling like someone was trying to pull my jaw away from my skull, the tooth was out and I was waiting for the bleeding to stop. The dentist went through some ground rules for the next 48 hours: no alcohol (shame), no chewing on that side (no shit), no mouth-washing until day 2 (errrm, OK), no smoking for rest of day (no issue), no vigorous exercise for 48 hours (what!!!) I tried to explain that I was marathon training but my protestations were met with blank looks. I walked home in a bit of a post-traumatic daze.

As it happened, the pain that hit a couple of hours later meant I am not sure I could have run that day anyway. Some runner friends confirmed that their insistence on running after having their teeth out had not ended prettily. Apparently the blood pumping hard round your veins can dislodge the bloodclot and... I'll stop there.

The tooth had healed by Saturday morning though and I hit the gym for a cheeky 45 minute session between dropping Lola off at music academy and picking Isla up from a sleepover. I warmed up and set my fresh legs at a short 5-mile progression run on a 4% incline. I pushed the last mile or so hard at around 5:20 pace (equivalent to 5:00 pace on the flat). I felt properly refreshed by the session. And, the knee was fine. Maybe the enforced two day break had been a good idea anyway.

I managed to squeeze in a 6 mile recovery run on Saturday evening - dropping the incline to 3%. And Sunday followed a similar pattern to Saturday with a reasonably hard 5-mile fartlek session in the morning (gradually increasing the base pace whilst holding the fast pace at around 6:20 on a 4% incline) with an easy recovery in the evening. Sunday evening was pizza night with the kids, watching 'The Voice'. And for the first time in a couple of weeks, I felt like I was training again.