A Training blunder….

After a nice week of skiing I decided that to sign up for the Bratislava half marathon in 2.5 weeks and thought I should do a bit of speed training as since my autumn injuries and then winter snow I’d been unable to do any. With the snow melting and the upcoming race in my mind I set out on Tuesday morning for a slightly longer run than normal and did 20-30 mins of long intervals in the middle.

On arriving home I was feeling good and in the afternoon I took my bike out for an hour in the nice weather. Wednesday was a day off, and then on Thursday ignoring all conventional advice I’ve read I went on another long run and did some more intervals. Still great! But in the morning my ankle hurt like hell. My punishment for not following my training plan.

I’ve never taken all the advice I’ve read in books too seriously. I’m lucky that my body generally responds well to training and though I generally increase workload or intensity gradually I’ve never followed the 10percent rule discussed by many experts. For years I’ve followed a fairly good running plan – 3 times a week, 1 long run (up to 2 hours), 1 tempo run (1 hourish) and in season a run with some type of interval training (1 hourish). When training for longer runs I’ve done up to 5 runs a week (usually the other two are easy and or short).

After reading about this pain on the internet it seemed I’d developed achilles tendonitis, but reading through the information not everything seemed true. I had no swelling, and my foot didnt hurt much without shoes on. So what was happening to me? After 5 days I decided to try to run again…. it hurt for 40 mins and then stopped – so I continued for another 40 mins – great, I’m cured…..

Only for the pain to return later, not as bad but still there. I looked for advice on the net and found some massage tips – so I massaged it and noticed that now it was swollen and red. I stopped massaging it and went to the doctors next day. Funny enough, it stilldidnt hurt without shoes on, so I was worried what I had done. 

He’s told me to rest for a week and given me cream and a bandage – it seems like pretty standard procedure. No half marathon next weekend but I hope to return to training next week and am still hoping to return to fitness in time for my first planned triathlon at the start of May.

I am feeling the pressure of training for this long distance race more than ever, 4 months seems very close now and it is driving me to take risks in training. I want to be well prepared but I know it is stupid to work too hard too quickly, and this has been a wake up call to listen to my body and take the time to rest if needed. Its also served as a reminder to follow my training schedule, instead of trying to squeeze in extra runs or extra workouts.