Bad news I'm afraid


I've been treading very carefully since mid August - sometimes more carefully than others.  There were a couple of races that I shouldn't have done, for example.  But I've been "listening to my body" which in reality means I've taken between 1 and 4 days off training whenever I've felt something hurting more than I thought it ought to.  For example, after the 5 mile road race, I thought I felt some plantar faciitis lurking, so that was a session with Kyle Pepperman-Hacket (highly recommended) and 4 days of rolling the foot on spiked ball.  And I've had many single day lay-offs to let tight calves recover.


So I'd say I'm pretty good at listening to my body - feeling those soft tissues straining, and reacting accordingly.


So, it was with dismay that I was hit with a stress fracture at the weekend.  Actually, it was with a fair bit of swearing, but I made sure there were no kids around first.


The second metatarsal of my left foot has gone, and on Sat and Sun I was in a lot of pain. 


Mrs. B. drove me to A&E, but as expected, nothing showed up.  A stress fracture is too small to show on an x-ray, and it's not until the bleeding starts to calcify that anything will show up, which is about 2 weeks after the initial trauma.  But the doctor, who seemed to know an awful lot about lower limb physiological matters, had a good poke, and based on my history, said that a stress fracture was most likely the problem.  Ok, so I wasn't quite brave enough to tell her the whole story of the complete switch from the Kayano (Asics' most padded stability shoe) to the Vivobarefoot (3mm of very flexible rubber, absolutely no padding) in not much longer time than it took Amazon to deliver them, but I was honest about the training volume.


And that is the problem.  It's too much pavement, on too thin a shoe, with too much gait change.  Consider where I started from, as shown in these pictures.  That's a lot to change in just 3 months.  But it was going so well that I got carried away.  I ran 29 days in November, and although that was an average of less than 5km per session, at an average pace of only 5:15/km, too much of it was on hard pavement.  So I either needed to run less, or more off-road.


I'm just reading Kelly Holmes' autobiography, and this morning my eyes popped out when I got to the chapter about her stress fracture that she noticed on the flight over to the Atlanta Olympics.  She writes:

... How I got the fracture I still can’t ‘be sure but it is possible that it was down to my footwear. I had changed sponsors halfway through the season after I had been offered my amazing four-year deal from Nike. I was so chuffed that the biggest sporting brand wanted to support me that I went for it. Instead of gradually changing over my running shoes so that my body had time to adjust to the new footwear, I just swapped my previous trainers for my new ones. Now I understand more about the intricacies of footwear and how careful one has to be...

So here I am, 5 days after the bone gave way, and the pain is subsiding quite quickly.  I shan't be running for a few weeks, but I'm not that down about it - I will get into some cross training (I'm going to the pool later today), and I've got another 15 months before my target race.


Onwards! 

Here I am, just over 3 months into the gait-change exercise, and a bit of a milestone reached.


A bit of background: the group I train with here at Southampton AC is an 800m through to 10k group.  We follow a periodised schedule (base training in the winter, speed in the summer) and in general, the same sessions come up on the same days each year.  For example, the session for the first Tue evening in December is 16x300m with 100m jog recovery.


And, I log all my sessions and times.  Of course I do. I'm the kind of person who keeps a blog!


So the milestone?  I ran 16x300m faster this Tuesday, than I did a year ago.  Ta da!


Okay, so there are some mitigating factors:

• last year I claimed that I was still tired from the Saturday "sand dunes" session 3 days previous
• I also complained about a mere 10 minute warm up (and in fact the times reflect that)

However, this year I am a lot less fit generally (due to the drastically reduced volume I've been describing in this blog), and, as coach Tilt would be able to tell you, my head was elsewhere for the first 4 reps. But it all came together nicely last Tuesday, and I felt good enough to run the last 3 reps with no shoes at all.


I won't be cracking open the champagne just yet - Keith talks about interim peaks.  Also I do ache quite a bit 2 days later, so not quite there yet on the base strength side.  But certainly a massive boost to the morale, and a great reassurance that the process is coming on quite nicely, thank you!

Will it work?!


I'm not gonna lie .... there have been a few occasions in the past three months when I've thought "I wonder if this gait change really will make me faster." 


Actually, that is a lie.  What I actually thought, was: "...will this gait change actually make me SLOWER?"!!


My goal, as I explained in the first entry (second sentence!) of this blog, was that "I hope this will lead to an improvement in performance."  That improvement in performance, as I progress from late 40s to early 50s, is probably not so much about getting faster, as not slowing down.  Aside from the incredibly talented (and dedicated) David Heath, my 800m times over the last couple of years would give me a comfortable national medal and possibly European. 


But there is a risk that my old gait worked for me, and I'd spent 7 years perfecting it, and strengthening the muscles that drove it.  Now I'm starting again - will there be another 7 years before I've fully honed this new gait?  It's possible.


Nothing, however, will weaken my resolve.  I'm hooked on this new gait, it feels much smoother, I love running in shoes that weigh 1/3 of what my old shoes weighed, and being completely vain, I know that I look more like Mr Farrah than Mr Bean!


There's a bit of me that wants to fast forward to the end of this film to see how it ends.  I won't truly know until the summer of 2017.  Next summer (2016) will not be a true test, because I'm not hitting enough mileage this winter.  This time next year, winter 2016/17, I will be back up to the 80km/50miles per week, so summer 2017 is judgement day.

"Treat it as if you are starting a new sport."  One of the most important lines in the whole book, in my opinion. Page 40

So, put yourself in the shoes of someone who really is running for the first time. You started running just 3 months ago.  You've got up to 20 mins at a steady pace, you ache a bit sometimes, you feel it the next morning! But you're pretty chuffed with how you're getting on, if truth be told. 

So when I got carried away, distracted by club mates (!) last week, and ran for 45 minutes, I pressed stop on my watch with a bit of a grimace.  And sure enough, I ached for two or three days afterwards. 

Just like a beginner would if she or he were to do the same.

This really is like starting a new sport.  But, like learning any new sport, it's fascinating and exciting!

You should take this, the longest gap between posts, as Good News!


This means that things are going very well in the world of smooth, floating, under-hip landing running. 


My strategy of strictly restricting runs to 20 to 25 mins, at no faster than 4:30/km (ish), but increasing frequency to every day, has really paid off.  I feel that the new posture is becoming automatic.  And this is giving me the opportunity to get the feel for micro-adjustments.  For example the balancing-exercises that Keith suggested two weeks ago (heels higher/lower, knee lift) and also concentrating on relaxing shoulders.


In fact, the only part of my body that aches now is my neck!  Clearly I'm consciously and artificially holding it back, or trying to pull my shoulders back, or something - probably in the quest for getting the head, hips, and landing-foot in alignment.  So I'm now working on relaxing the shoulders, letting them drop, and thinking more about not bending forward at the waist.


I'll let you know if it works!


Oh, and I won't pretend that I'm not just a little bit excited that Keith and Heidi are working on the second edition of the book as we speak!!

Breakthrough ... albeit a small one!!

This mornings run marks the 7th in 7 days.  All of them 20 mins or less.  All of them at an easy pace.

This was in marked difference to the previous 10 to 12 weeks, where I had been running every two or three days, but trying to make up for the gaps by running harder or longer than I should have.

So, this week was like calming things down, taking advantage of the things I'd learned (consciously and subconsciously), and really concentrating on landing under the hips.

And the last 2 or three days really feel like I've cracked it.  Everything is going very smoothly.  And all the aches and pains have gone (aches and pains brought on by trying to run too hard using muscles that just weren't ready for it yet).

So, more of the same next week.  And the week after. And the week after.  In fact I think I'll keep going - easy short and frequent - for the month of November, perhaps letting myself go for up to 30 mins by the end of the month.  But certainly no speed work or tempo runs for now!

Very happy

Coldplay sang

"Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start"

Some days that's how I feel.

I found, even at week 12, I had so many little niggles and aches, I just wondered if it's worth it.

The Book says "think of this as taking up a new sport".  Well, does that mean I need to put in another 10,000 hours (10 years) to perfect it?  Of course not, but sometimes it feels like it!

It's all my fault.  A bit like a recovering addict, I've fallen off the wagon a few times, and every time I do, it feels like starting from the start.  The falls, in my case, have been that one session, or that parkrun, or that race, where I've thought "oh, I'll just test myself" or "I must be ready by now".  But I haven't been, and I'm left feeling like a bag of spanners.

The latest lapse was a parkrun, 9 days ago (19 mins).  I pushed hard in the second half because I felt good.  But it left me with aches in the feet, ankles, legs and hips for at least 5 days. 

However, Everything's Not Lost (last track, Parachutes)!!

I took 4 days off running, completely, and all the niggles have gone, save the subtlest of what feels like bruising under the heels.  I'm walking down stairs looking straight ahead, not looking like a crab.  I ran Eastleigh parkrun (grassy, hilly, 5km) on Saturday in bare feet (24 mins).  I waited all afternoon for the pain to kick in, but it never came.  I ran off road today in Merrell Gloves, and it felt great.

So this is my promise to me:  No more speed of any kind, until the muscles, tendons, and ligaments are ready to take it. 

But I do want to acknowledge that I've been at this for 12+ weeks now.  So I am going to start running every day, strictly 20 mins max (more likely 15 mins), at a very steady pace.  Off road where possible.  I'll listen to my body, and at the first sign of a niggle, take the day off.

I will behave!