It has been a while between posts so I thought it was about time to share an update. Last time I posted was back in October, and it’s interesting reading back and comparing to where I’m up to now with my training.

At that point I was running 3 times per week and my long run was 40 minutes. I was also getting a bit of achyness with my left thigh where I had the injury.

November

Throughout November I continued running 3 times per week in the 20-25km per week range. It was during this month that I did my first session on the track and I was also starting to lift some reasonable weight in the gym.

However my leg was starting to feel achy again, so the second last week of November I had an offloading week where I didn’t run. My Physio also thought some of the heavy strength work I was doing may be an issue, so we decided to drop it and focus more on my postural cues and shoulder stability with body weight and band work, 3 times per week.

December

December I continued my 3 days per week of running around 20-25km per week. One thing we worked on was building the long run up gradually from 45-50 mins to 60 mins. As well as doing a mix of different interval sessions.

Falls Creek

I was almost having second thoughts about the annual Falls Creek altitude training camp. With not being able to run all that much would it be worth going? But I’m glad I went up as I had a really good time.

In terms of running I actually did progress up at Falls, introducing a 4th run for the week. Not a bad time to do it really with the extra down time and recovery you get while up at Falls. Started with an easy 20 min jog the first week, then 25 mins the following week. I didn’t do too many of the group runs up there, but I was able to do mona fartlek and a couple 1km reps with the group. But overall a great time with great people!

January

During January my Physio suggested to slot back into training with the club. So I started doing our pretty standard track sessions.. 1km reps on Tuesdays and 400s on Thursdays. Saturday I kept as an easy jog and Sunday long run. I started to hit 30km per week and my long run from 10km to 12km by the end of the month.

I had a small back off during the month due to feeling a bit achy again. But after a couple days of cross training that seemed to be enough to get back on track.

February

This month I decided I wanted to add in Threshold runs. I know the great Peter Burke has always said that threshold runs are the most important for getting fit, which I would tend to agree with. Usually at Western Aths this would mean doing a threshold on a Saturday, in addition to two interval sessions during the week.

But after having a good think about things I decided, for now at least, I want to be conservative and stick with just two hard sessions per week. This allows for more recovery between sessions. While coached by Chelsea we had some good success using a cycle of 3 hard sessions one week, 2 the next week, repeat. That seemed to work well for me. I have also taken some influence from Inside Running podcast and some of the American college coaches who have had good success with 2 sessions per week.

For the last few weeks I have done – intervals or fartlek on the Tuesday, easy aerobic run on Wednesday plus some strides, Threshold on Friday (and starting to add in some hill repeats) and long run on Sunday. So far so good, running in the 32-35km per week range and just hit 36km this week.

Next week I’m planning on adding in a 5th run, which will be another easy aerobic run on the Saturday. I’m doing these easy runs by HR and not looking at pace just to keep them really as a recovery run and hopefully build some base aerobic fitness.

Coming up

While not perfect, I’m starting to feel pretty positive about my running again. I’ve still had some mild achyness occasionally, but less often now. And if I do get it it’s usually gone with a switch to cross training for a day or two or some massage/release.

I’m looking forward to XCR cross country and road racing season. Certainly not expecting to run any PBs but after missing the entire season last year, I’m keen to just get out there and enjoy it. Really I’m just thankful to be able to run reasonably consistently again and can hopefully continue building back some volume and fitness!

I’m also possibly attempting my first race quite soon.. so that might be my next update!