Getting back on the wagon

I thought I’d finally commit to the blog with some good news: I finally got a clean bill of health from the sports docs. :) For the first time since January I am finally 100% free of injury. Long may it last!

Just to summarise - as I knowI miss out some of the key pieces of info (especially if they're not good news) from the blog normally... I had hit a bit of a setback in early January when a virus wiped me out completely for a fortnight – the result of long-hauling it back from Oz to the UK for Xmas and not breaking from volume training – and then had very little recovery prior to going on Epic Camp NZ and beasting myself for 8 days. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best part of the next 4 months were a blur of training ups and downs, cramping and muscle pain, fatigue and moodiness! Finally, a pile of normal blood tests later, it was given a name: post viral fatigue – though luckily not as severe as some cases I’ve since seen or read about. To add insult to injury – or perhaps injury to insult – I had also picked up shin splints in March as I continued to try to drill my body through excessive fatigue and general tightness (and a questionable pair of trainers too). Luckily for me the solution to both problems was pretty similar: rest, rest and more rest. So much of March and the whole of April was pretty much a write-off, and even in May, though my appetite for training was starting to return, the running was still on hold.

So, a load of rest, a few tonnes of ice, hours of massage, aquajogging and core, a handful of physio and podiatry sessions later (and did I mention orthotics?), I started to run with trepidation at the start of June – just a few kms a week to start, and gradually building (despite a small setback when i got totalled by a bus in London!). I even went to IMCdA knowing I wasn’t running the marathon – that was tough mentally! (But great to finally meet some of the team and Tristan, as well as ride the beautiful orange Trek in a race scenario). But this week I’m hitting 70kms running – a milestone for me as it is what I generally consider a weekly floor to run volume in ‘normal’ training.

I am finally back in training properly as of next week. Touch wood I’ve not jinxed the recovery process! But you can’t blame a guy for being positive! It is amazing how great such a simple thing as being able to run properly again, and enjoy training fully can make you feel. Its not to be taken for granted! With just under 7 weeks to IMUK, looks like my season will be starting a little later than anticipated, but better late than never.

Happy training!

Post-Epic Recovery

Since Epic, I've made it back to Geelong and starting to feel more human again. First couple of days I did nothing (partly thanks to a pile of work that needed to be done) mainly due to the fact that my quads were in tatters. Wednesday I started back in with a swim and built slowly from there. Most of the sessions have been fairly easy, nothing longer than 2 hours. Total training time this week only hit 15hours. Finished off the week by doing the run leg for a team at HIM Geelong. It was just a training run for me, so I sat around 4 min kms for the duration, steady and fairly easy... that was more than I expected to be able to do by this weekend, so that's good. Part of me hated doing the run as I wanted to be racing it, but other parts of me (my legs) were quite happy to just watch. Tara Norton (from Epic) was down doing the race and cracke dout 5th. Didn't manage to catch up with her afterwards to find out how it felt, but I think that's a pretty good way to back-up Epic! Way to go Tara! I certainly wasn't in any state to go racing.

time rolls on...

... and suddenly its under 4 weeks to IMUK. Thank god austria was a good result - means the pressure is off! And I'm glad about that. Two weeks might be OK for Rebecca Preston, but I think 6 weeks between IMs might be a struggle for me! I took the first week really easy, just scraping 5 hours of training, with 3 full rest days. Week 2 after austria (last week) was transition, so ramped up the number of sessions again, but limited the time allocated to each session, so longest ride was 2:30, longest run was 1:15. Hit 20 hours comfortably, just with a lot of laundry and showers for the hours of training involved! In theory this fortnight is high volume, shifting to high intensity next week before tapering again! It'll be an interesting experiment in recovery time. This time 2 years ago, what I'm doing now would have been inconceivable - I think I had at least a month really easy before getting back into training (more out of necessity than from plan)... so its good to see fitness improvements in other ways.