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.