I had plenty of good intentions for this year: recover, rebuild and get plenty of buildup races in. The problem is, it hasn't quite worked out that way.
I took a couple of weeks off after Wanaka (should have been a couple of months), then started to rebuild my running gradually. My plan for running was to rebuild slowly and get back on the hills regularly. I've always loved running on the hills and taking a break from my coach will allow me to get up there again. He'd given me hill intervals at one point but I wanted steady climbing.
The bike plan was to hold steady at one 50km ride per week with some technique and a little sprint work, then pick it up substantially as the weather improves through spring and summer, with lots of hills and lots of distance work. For swimming I wanted to look for improvement this year so I had a plan to increase my mileage and get plenty of intensity in.
I had decided to do the Chch Half Marathon again as the race was moving back into the city, so I had to get back into training a little sooner than I should have. I was making good progress though, even getting some easy hill work in.
Then disaster struck. I discovered I had the beginnings of another stress fracture in my leg, after doing a run workout just a little bit too hard. I think the body may have been on edge for a while and that was just enough to push it over. I don't want to have to go through the full rehab process again so I took a couple of weeks off and cut my training back, while thinking I could probably still make the half as long as I just aim for a sub-2hr time which is about the slowest I'm willing to aim for.
The writing was on the wall though as the pace I had to maintain for my longer training runs was too much for the leg and I realised I was pushing my luck long-term. I cancelled my plans and cut the training back even further, deciding to spend 6 weeks running 30 mins at 6:30/km pace, 3 times a week. Slow enough to hopefully prevent further damage while giving time for the bone to start healing.
The leg seemed to cope ok with that and after the initial six weeks I've been slowly building up, each week adding 5 mins and running 5 seconds/km faster. Next week is 60 mins at 6:00/km pace, after which I'll keep the time steady but keep speeding up at the same rate for a while longer. I may also do some gentle undulating hill work with a view to hitting the hills properly again (oh yeah, my achilles isn't doing too well either, caused by going back too hard on the hill after the 2-week break). If that goes well I should still be able to get some good training in for Wanaka.
At the same time I finally went to see my physio about a sore muscle in the pelvic region. I'd been procrastinating about it last year because it hadn't been affecting my training at all, but I finally decided enough was enough and it needed treatment. I was a bit sheepish explaining why I'd left it so long. Unfortunately, the treatment, while effective, wasn't quite enough. It also experienced a massive flareup a few weeks into the rehab after a swim, so it was off to a sports doctor for a closer look.
At the same time I booked in with my podiatrist to take a look at my feet which were still having occasional issues. She found I have high arches which makes me very prone to lower leg injuries, something I really wish I'd known a lot earlier. It probably explains why I never got injured when I used to run in control shoes as I probably had more arch support. I had moved to a neutral shoe after a technique session with my coach.
I'm still mulling over the options here but I'll probably end up using orthotics to manage the arches. I have some exercises to try for a few weeks to sort out the issues I'd been having, but I don't know if you can "fix" the high arches and I'm told the shoe manufacturers don't really offer any options. I'll discuss that with my podiatrist at my next followup.
For my sore pelvic muscle the doc sent me off for X-rays which showed I have some sideways curvature in my spine so he's now referred me to a chiropractor. It's not quite to the extent of Richard III but enough to warrant further investigation. I doubt this has anything to do with the issue at hand but it's worth having it looked at anyway. My bike fitter mentioned there might be a little bit of curvature a couple of years ago so it's interesting to see it on the X-ray. The underlying cause of this is anyone's guess... I actually wonder if my legs differ in length (the X-ray was taken standing up) or maybe I've just grown that way. Or perhaps I really am a descendant of Richard III and can lay claim to the throne.
After the big flareup I stopped swimming as pushing off the wall caused pain, and I'm holding off until I get things sorted out because I don't want another setback. I'm annoyed because I was making huge gains in the pool this year. I started the year at about 10:00 for a 500m time trial, where I've been stuck for ages, and got it down to 9:12 in the space of a few months. Yeah I'm no superstar but I was really pleased with that progress.
I'd done this by thinking about my technique a bit, mainly due to a problem I'd been having in the open water, combined with an increase to 2 swims a week: one a steady distance workout with the other being a session where I do sets of decreasing distance and increasing intensity. Two swims a week still isn't very much but my local pool is severely overcrowded and I was lucky to find times that give me half a chance of getting a good workout twice a week. Any more workouts are just going to be interrupted too much to be worthwhile.
I've probably lost all those gains now but I know I can get it back, provided I can get back into the pool again... otherwise my entire swim training for the season will be in the open water which is not exactly convenient. But I'm confident that I can bash out 1900m with very little preparation if I have to.
With all the treatment I'm going through I'm hoping that I can not only get my injuries sorted out, but also make some gains in preventing future injury. That's about all that's keeping me going at the moment. After Wanaka, assuming I get there, I plan to have a decent recovery break - a couple of months at least - then will try and work on getting some proper consistent training for the following year. Although I wonder how many times I've told myself that...
