Some great news from the sports doctor this week. Received the go ahead to commence walk/jog program!

This Week

Monday

Weigh in: 65.4kg, 17.9% body fat. Oh hey, I’m actually down 0.4 of a kg from last week.

I had every intention on getting a gym session in today, I had my gear in my bag, but unfortunately got held up at work! At data science class I presented my three project ideas – cooling tower non-compliance correlation with legionella sample detections, AFL supercoach scoring predictions, and running training paces correlation with race pace. The instructor liked all my ideas with the only exception being that supercoach data is difficult to acquire.

I’ve decided to go with the running data project, with the cooling tower idea as a fall back if it the running data ends up being too difficult.

Tuesday

I had been waiting for this day to come around, the 4 week follow up appointment with the sports doctor. My usual doctor Dr Barresi is on holiday so this time I saw Dr Kathy Yu. It was interesting to see a different doctor with a fresh perspective on the injury. Kathy was quite interested in the cause since a stress reaction in the middle of the femur is rare for a runner, it would usually be higher up in the femoral neck with the kind of forces from running. She thought that for it to occur that far down it would have to be from rotational force through the hip.

Kathy also noted that I have tight nerves bilaterally, which is something my physio Laura had also picked up on earlier in the year. I’m to re-start doing my flossing exercises (a type of stretching) that Laura has started me doing. Kathy’s theory is that when running faster I may have been hitting the limit of my stride length (with all the nerve tightness) and my hip might be rotating to compensate. So it’s interesting to have another theory around the cause that seems to add up, I was heavily focused on speed work at the time. And Cara also agreed the theory fits and that she had suspected rotational forces.

Now the really good news out of all of that is I also got the OK to commence walk/jog program! Very exciting after not being able to do any running for 16 weeks!

Wednesday

At lunch I got out for my first “run” back. Really it’s just a walk with a tiny bit of running – 30 minute walk with 5 x 30 seconds of running. I ran on the grass to keep the impact low. First 30 second rep I was very slow and cautious, but after that began to relax and feel more comfortable with running again. Didn’t have any pain or soreness during or after, so a positive re-introduction of running.

Thursday

Down to the pool Thursday night for a swim. I ended up with 1025m on my watch.. but it was either 1000m or 1050m I’m not quite sure. More likely to be 1050m I think since it can seem to add an extra lap if you do a weird movement. When I’ve been swimming I’ve always been breathing on my right side, every fourth stroke. But tonight I thought it was time to practice breathing on my left, so breathing every third stroke alternating sides. Very awkward at first I breathed in water when going to the left at least twice, but started to get the hang of it. I feel like I might be able to swim faster with getting air in a bit more frequently.

Friday

Was going to do rehab exercises BUT went to European Night Market instead. It’s literally held right at my office. Dumplings and mulled wine or rehab exercises? hmmm

Saturday

In the morning I did a repeat of my 30 minute walk with 5 x 30 seconds running. My pace for the running was actually quite reasonable. I was focused purely on form thinking about each leg moving the same as each other. My paces were 4:52/km, 4:54/km, 4:41/km, 4:39/km and 4:24/km. I definitely wasn’t putting any effort into my stride at all so I was surprised to see sub 5 min km pace. But I guess when you’re only running 30 seconds at a time it’s going to be faster than running for a longer duration, also GPS accuracy can be questionable over just 30 seconds.

After that I headed to Sandown racecourse with Mechelle and Aimee suspected hurricane conditions with the race cut down to 1 lap, but eh it was pretty mild normal cross country conditions to be honest. I was AV helper recording times for the U16 girls. Which wasn’t a bad gig, the junior teams have 3 runners doing 1 lap each so it was all over and done with pretty quickly. The trickiest part was the first change over when the teams are all pretty close together, I ended up missing a couple and had to check with the team recorders.

Finished off the day at mum and dad’s for home made boston beans!

Sunday

Met Sharon down at the pool for some water running. We did about a 14 minute easy warm up and then got into a longer rep session 4 x 6 minute efforts with 1 minute recovery. After that got in a 500m swim, bit of a mix of breathing every 4 strokes or 3 strokes. Finished in 14:19 which is a new 500m best for me! I had a nice reward after the swim, gingerbread men delivered from the Gold Coast, Main Beach Bakery! A little broken from their journey but still delicious!

Detail

Song of the week

With the return to running this week I thought I’d post a celebratory song. I actually spent way too long trying to decide on a song but in the end went with one of my all time favourites!

Coming up

I’m aware that I’ve been extremely crap at getting my rehab exercises done this week. So definitely going to pick that up next week as well as the flossing exercises.

Tuesday I’ll progress the running to 8 x 30 seconds.

Wednesday I see Cara, I believe the plan will be to check my running biomechanics on the treadmill and continue working on hip strength.