2015 - The Year of Recovery

2015 was never going to be a year of amazing races, having had my ankle chopped open, my anterior talo-fibular ligament (the one that stops you from twisting your ankle when it's working properly) sliced in half, a couple of bits of metal tapped into my bones and some plastic string sewn into them to strengthen up the whole thing.  Given that I was in a plaster cast and on crutches at the beginning of the year and not allowed put any weight on that foot still until I got an air boot on 17th January and then was allowed put weight on that foot without the boot 2 weeks later... any running was totally off until March.  It then turned out that once I was allowed out of the air boot, I had to learn how to walk again having not felt anything touch the bottom of my foot since the start of December 2014.  And that kinda cramped my style running-wise on top of the 4 months of zero aerobic (or even any load bearing) exercise.

I was terrified that I'd be totally back to zero.  Everyone told me that was rubbish and that I was fit and it'd take no time, but that only really applies to life-long athletes, or at least those who have been pretty fit for many years.  And that's not me.



And it did take a while.  A really good while.  And I'm still not quite there yet.  The graph above is the effects of my last 2 years of training. The blue curve is my chronic training load - long term training effect on fitness which you can read as "fitness level". (Pink is acute training load, so the huge spike is when I ran the Thames Path, then a flatline afterward when I did literally nothing, not even walking; and yellow is "freshness", so again a huge drop during Thames Path and then a big recovery when I sat on my bum for 4 months.)

2015 did, however, see some PBs of the 1/2 marathon variety.  Which was quite nice.  But I bottled a marathon and did rather averagely at a multi-day ultra.  That said, I hit the ultras again pretty early on in the recovery, which was a great psychological boost at the time.

Now that I'm pretty much recovered, in 2016 I want to get back to doing what I want to do, not what a broken bit of body limits me to.  So, after I've got Country to Capital out of the way (a silly little 43ish mile race), I'm knuckling down to a quick & dirty marathon then it's time to hit the 50 milers.

I want to do the Centurion Running 50 Mile Grand Slam this year.  And have a go at a 100 miler.  So let's see what happens!

Patience... *yawn*

Patience is not my top skill, but I'm getting to exercise it now I'm back under Centurion James' coaching.  We're Being Careful not to break my recently repaired ankle by taking things too hard too soon.  Which means really low mileage and really easy runs.

So, I started back with James on 1st June (after a week's very indulgent holiday which had a little running in it, but not much.).  And it's meant I'm doing *less* than I had been by myself, which I know is right, but when I see the Training Peaks progress graphs I get a bit sad as the fitness line (blue line below) has stopped going up now.

Still. I'm back doing strength and conditioning with at least some regularity (work travel volume is making it tricky to keep a twice a week rhythm at The Athletic Edge).  And I'm back being coached by someone who knows what they're doing.  And I'm getting parkruns in enough that I should hit my 100th parkrun before the end of this year.  So overall, things are looking good!  But I have to be patient.

Race cancellation spree

I've been on a race cancellation spree this morning.  Everything between now and about June next year.  So, no Dorset half marathon this week, no Country to Capital or Pilgrim Challenge in January and no Rotterdam Marathon in April (I'll have been allowed to run for only 6 weeks before this, so it'd be really thick to even think about trying to do it and risk messing up the repairs).

It turns out that I need surgery to reconstruct a couple of ligaments in my ankle.  This means 6 weeks in a cast afterwards, with no weight bearing allowed, and a total of 12 weeks of no running allowed at all.

I'm glad this has been brought forward from 9th Jan to 5th Dec, as it means I'll be 4 weeks into recovery by the time I start my new job and really handy on crutches by then.  It does mean that I'll be sitting on my backside at home for 4 weeks going more than a little nuts though.  It'll be bloody good to have things fixed though, so the likelihood of turning that ankle is reduced way below where it is at the moment.

Bring it on!

And I fully intend to go ahead with Ring O' Fire in September!

Slightly overwhelmed

(if that's possible)

4 weekends; 4 races.  Sprint, 70.3, Olympic, Sprint.  And I really really care about the first two.  Thing is, I'm going to have my ass handed to me at both.  The field at Thames Turbo race 4 looks like it's gonna be a good-un.  And the Austrians and Germans are pretty dominating for the 70.3 the following Sunday.

I really wanted to do well, but I don't think I'll place very highly at either.   Plus, I do need to be careful at Thames Turbo due to the local traffic and starting so late.

Getting a grip - one day at a time

I'm getting a grip.  Slowly.  One day at a time.  And I did a good run because of it.

Thanks to Marvellous Mimi for the daily inspirations

Sunday, I ran a 15km race on a whim.  A friend mentioned it on Facebook a week ago, so I signed up so I could meet up for a bit of a social.  And for the first time in 7 days, I exercised on Sunday and I ran.  I ran pretty darned hard, for me.  Having had no idea whether I'd try for a decent time or just run steady and have a chat around the course, I decided on the start line when everyone else I was with disappeared.  And I decided to bang it out somewhat.

1st/2nd lap - lookin' good, feelin' good

05:45/km was the goal.  And for the first couple of km I glanced down at the km beep, at my watch and saw quicker than that despite having done my now usual prancing, high cadence start.  05:17 then 05:14, up a little rise and 05:26, then 05:05 down a little gradient, 05:19 and the first lap done.  I thought it felt a bit tough, but do-able and I kept the pressure on.

Second lap and started with 05:19 then 05:08 and decided I wanted a drink.  It wasn't that warm, but my mouth was dry so I slowed to a walk at the water station and took a swig or two before trotting off again.  That gave me an 05:34 km which was annoying, but still well under my 05:45 average target.  Long story short; I carried on at the same lick of a pace, pushed through the inevitable brain:body conversation that goes "oh you don't really need to be going this quickly. you could slow down and take it easy. what's the point of this, you're not going to get a quick time anyway, take it easy." etc. responded to by my over-ride of "oh shush, this doesn't hurt. it'll be fun. you'll be happy with a quicker time if you just keep the pace up. stop whining and keep up the effort." etc.  My will won out in the end :o)

And I averaged 05:16/km.  Almost 30s per km quicker than I'd hoped.  My long (anything over an hour) runs have been all at well over 06:40/km these last months and I was worried I couldn't actually hurt enough to run quickly now.  And the route is so twisty that it slows you down...

3 laps and windy as all hell

3 laps of this is a lot of hair-pins and a good few dead-turns.  Seeing the times staying well under my target was... more than spirit-raising.  Overtaking lots of people doing the 10km route on my second lap was spirit-raising - they started a few minutes before the 15km race wave.  Starting the third lap was interesting as the quite reasonable number of other runners pretty much disappeared.  And the rest of the third lap was a battle in my own head of "who am I racing?" "I don't see any women any more"  "I could ease off a bit as long as I don't lose a place, 'cause I'm not going to catch any women".  And then I saw a woman ahead of me.  Thing was, it could be a woman on her 2nd lap of the 10km race, rather than a woman on the 3rd lap of the 15km race.  And she was running only a little bit slower than me, so she could have been on the 15km race and not paced well, so ran out of steam, or on the 10km race and surging through the course slowly/quickly/slowly/quickly etc.  I decided that as I was gaining on her, that I may as well make the effort to overtake, just in case.  If I'd been able to see her race bib, I would have known the answer; navy blue bib = 10km, orange bib = 15km.  But you can't see that from behind and I was too far away, then behind trees whenever I might have seen due to a twist or turn in the course.  So I overtook her in the last 2km.  And spent that last 2km making sure she didn't take the place back.

2nd lap - starting to feel the pain a bit

Over the line in just over 01:20 and having passed the 10km mark in fastest race 10km time to date I got my goodie bag, medal and quick photo with the girls.  Then off to a coffee shop for coffee and cake.

And there we see some of the problem.

Since the beginning of the month, I've managed only two days where I haven't eaten cake, drunk wine or had both.  Life is pretty intense at the moment.  Lots of new job, lots of travel, lots of MrTOTKat away on business, worry about family, trying to slowly sort out house renovations and worry about training/not training.  And it means something has to crack.

Nutrition choices have been the victim.   Given that the world isn't set up for easy choices that work with my nutritional preferences, at least once a day it's just less stressful to make the choice that doesn't follow my preference or I just really feel the need to have things that are specifically "bad" - cake, wine, cake and wine... so instead of getting even more wound up, I've just been relaxing into it.  Having cake.  Having wine.  Quite a lot of both really.  But it's OK.  No, really, it's OK.  I know it's the opposite of what I've been trying to do the last 6 months, but I'm OK with it.

3rd lap, sucking it up and pushing through - full gurning in force

I'm taking things one day at a time.  I'm OK with the thought that maybe I'll need to re-think my nutrition strategy for UK 70.3, but the thing is that I'll get a steady state test done 2 weeks out and use the data from that to calculate what I need in-race.  It actually doesn't matter too much whether I've regressed a bit on the fat vs carbohydrate burning ratio as long as I know what the numbers are so I can be conservative about how much I take on during the race.  Obviously, I'd like for things to be optimised, but life happens and that's not where I am at the moment.

So I'm taking training day by day and I'm taking nutrition day by day and although I'm really quite soft and squashy (which I think is more related to the fact that my strength training tailed off a lot of months ago and I've not done any for quite a while, rather than the nutritional choices, so I've lost muscle mass) my weight is going down a little bit and I've lost 1/2kg of the 4 I gained in the last couple of months.
And I thought I'd busted my 10K PB.  During a 15km race.  52:57 for 10km, where previous were around 54 minutes, but I found a 52:27 back in 2011, so.  Bah!

But anyway.  Given where I am, how I feel, what's going on and all, I'm pretty pleased.  And I'm taking things one day at a time.

2011 - the year of too many races

2011 was the year of too many races randomly sprinkled through the year, no actual training, too much annoying knee injury, but lots of fun:-

 

(our wall of races, needs to come down now)

• 5x Sprint Triathlons
• 2x Olympic Distance Triathlons
• 2x Half Marathons
• 1x Thames swim
• 1x London to Brighton
• 3x 10Ks
• And a bunch of Parkruns, but they don't reaaaally count.

2012 looks like this:-

• 1x Sportive (February)
• 5x Sprint Triathlons (April to August)
• 1x Olympic Distance (May)
• 1x Half Ironman (June)
• 1x Ironman (September)
• (and a bunch of Parkruns, most likely)

NO ENTERING ANY MORE RACES BEFORE THE END OF SEPTEMBER! (Long running events, sportives and century rides are allowed -if- they fit with my training schedule and are treated as training sessions, but otherwise, NO!)

Oops. Or, a first commitment.

How to stay grounded?

How the hell do people do it?  When you've set a goal way further in the future than when you need to actually start doing anything about it.  How do you stay focussed on the current tasks in hand.  How do you stop yourself from starting to do stuff waaaaay too early?

I'm struggling to contain myself at the moment and it is definitely too early to change tack on the stuff I'm doing at the moment.  Having been at 3 so far this year so far (2x Thames Turbo Sprint triathlons and 1x Clapham Common 10K),  and missing the Sheffield Half Marathon (boo to gonky knees!) there are 13 more races/events left for me this year to focus on between tomorrow and the middle of December (not including the ad-hoc Parkrun 5Ks every so often):-

• 2x Thames Turbo Sprint triathlons
• Blenheim Sprint triathlon
• Shock Absorber Women's Sprint triathlon
• 3x Clapham Common 10Ks
• Nokia Thames swim (2.25 miles)
• Virgin London Olympic triathlon
• British 10K
• London to Brighton
• Nike+ Run to the Beat Half Marathon
• The Grim Original (8 miles off-road run)

So there's no way, especially for the new events to me (Olympic, Half Marathon, and the off-roader), that I can drop focus on this lot.  I'm really hoping I can keep my head straight through it all.  But the revelation to me right now is that while I have no doubt of getting 'round every single one of these (barring injury) physically, the battle now is almost purely mental.

And mental is something I've proven, what with losing 30kg and keeping it off for 5 years.  But still... ongoing and new challenges will constantly test the resolve.  Which is tiring.

Coming up this year...

Enough talk of injury, here's what's on the plan for this year:-

• 15th January - The Grim Original (deferred entry to the 2011 Grim due to injury)
• 20th February - Hell of The Ashdown (support, not racing)
• 20th March - Clapham Common 10K
• 8th-10th April - Swimathon (distance undecided)
• 25th April - Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlon #1
• 2nd May - Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlon #2
• 8th May - Sheffield Half Marathon
• 30th May - Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlon #3
• 5th June - British Triathlon Super Series, Blenheim Triathlon (sprint distance)
• 12th June - British Triathlon Super Series, Windsor Triathlon (sprint distance - awaiting availability of places)
• 3rd July - Clapham Common 10K (not yet entered)
• 31st July - British Triathlon Super Series, London Triathlon (Olympic distance)
• 29th August - Thames Turbo Sprint Triathlon #4
• 18th September - Clapham Common 10K (not yet entered)
• 16th October - Clapham Common 10K (not yet entered)

• TBC - British Triathlon Super Series, Strathclyde Park Triathlon (probably sprint)
• TBC - British Triathlon Super Series, Parc Bryn Bach Triathlon (probably sprint)
• TBC - The Grim Original 2011

Most of this was the product of one night of booking frenzy just before Christmas.  Not sure when we get to go on holiday amongst that lot, and there's a patch with races 3 weekends in a row which is a teeeeensy bit exciting and will mean an interesting period of resting and fuelling which might be a bit difficult.

Anybody else doing any of these?   And does anybody else do crazy things like sign up for loads of races all at once?