Day 10 post-headbump came and went, then day 11 and day 12, and I was staring wistfully at the ceiling with a constant message circling around my head like a hunting falcon: “Wait until you feel normal”.
I jolted up so quickly that the tin of peas taped to my head went flying off and smashed through the window (I’ve long since run out of frozen peas). The sudden realisation hit me as hard as the wall did in the first place: I’ve never, not once, neither been nor felt normal, not for a day in my life.
By Saturday, I seemed to have strode forth from the pea soup brain-prison I’d been locked in for the last fortnight and into something of a clearing. Birds were chirping, butterflies were fluttering by, and the kids were endlessly bickering, so I thought this high time to lace ‘em up and get out for a spin around the block.
The plan was a(nother) 2-mile poodle to dip my toes back into the water and it was an absolute head-to-toe chore. It was one of those ‘I hate running’ runs that makes you wonder why you bother with any of it. I was achier than Billy Ray Cyrus’ breaky-heart, my knee felt decrepit, I had one of my sudden, fleeting senses of, “Have I come the right way? I don’t recognise any of this” despite being on the same street as in the first mile of every single run-route I’ve had for the last 4 years, and so got home thinking how and when can I break out of this box?
The headache set in again too, and back into the fog I receded.
It really bothered me for the entire day and the mind reeled. The last few similarly-distanced forays have been all been equally as achy and unenjoyable; my heart rate has been syncing BPM’s with cheesy 90’s techno too and this all seems to last for the first 3km, and then settles for the last 200m.
The reason I’m running such (relatively) short distances anyway is because I’m trying to be sensible. My goal event is not until July, and I’ve come off the back of 12 weeks lay-up, so I’ve had the luxury of time to let the waves gently lap at my ankles before wading on in.
You know? The normal approach.
But I tape tins of peas to my swollen head instead of frozen ones. That’s not normal.
Then I got to likening myself to a piece of old machinery that’s long since fallen into disrepair, rediscovered at the back of an abandoned lock-up, all seized and rusted and fat. Look how much good ‘rest’ did for that poor fella. Maybe I just need a clean (I smelled), a good greasing, and a decent tick-over to get the parts sliding freely, rather than a long, drawn out rehabilitation?
Another problem was that I didn’t have a gauge on current fitness levels. This isn’t an issue on it’s own, but without having a known quantity, it’s difficult then to isolate and measure the unknowns. I.e. are my struggles down to injury or debauchery? I hatched a plan for Sunday to head out for a 10K and see what’s what. I’ve got a couple of bail-out points around my 10K loop so if things started to get messy, I could cut it short, but I just needed to figure out where I was in life.
It did me the world of good. Mentally that is, my body is yet to thank me.
My 10K’er is a little bit lumpy, with 3 noticeable hills. At the top of the second one (which is the closest bail-out point to home) my heart rate was maxed-out. If it was a cartoon, my watch would’ve made an awooooooooga sound and then exploded, leaving nothing but my smoking running shoes in the base of a crater. This segment of the run unequivocally demonstrated to me that my fitness is down there, in the gutter somewhere, but it also lit the short-fuse on my motivation.
In a split second I fell in love with it all again.
I was like a mad captain at the helm, navigating a rickety ship head-first into hurricane-shaped oblivion, screaming above the whipping winds “She can hold, she can hold!” whilst my legs creaked and groaned. I got through, mainly on experience.
It’s been a little while since I’ve had a post-run high. I must’ve turned into a lightweight. I am feeling it a bit today though. I don’t think I can class myself as ‘10K fit’, but let’s not get lost in the inconsequential details.
I had to sneak up on the legs beforehand. They never would have signed off on the distance knowingly. I tried Beachcomber66 and ktsok trick of warming the knee up with a hot water bottle, luring it into a pleasant, docile state, and managed to get out the door and round the corner before it realised what we were up to. I think there was some benefit felt from the process; even if only a meditative way of preparing for battle.
My daughter said, “that’s mine” to which I replied, “you’re mine, so it’s mine” to which she replied, “I’m not, I’m mine”, to which I replied, "You don’t even like Disney princesses OR pink fluffiness anymore, so why can’t I just have it?", to which she replied, “they’re my favourite”, and we back-and-forthed for about 10 minutes on the subject, so it may not have been all that meditative in hindsight. But it was cozy, so I’ll definitely try it again. When she’s suitably distracted.
I didn’t head out with any targets and found myself running in the dead zone (I have been doing so quite a lot recently) between easy and tempo paces. This taxes on the body without really returning any added strength or fitness benefits.
I’m an admirer of the 80/20 rule; I don’t follow it absolute, but one main aspect of this training philosophy that I try to stick to is that easy runs are easy, hard runs are hard. This maximizes returns on strength and fitness, as well as manages risk profile with regard to injury.
Easy pace for me should be 6:15min/km – 6:30min/km (normally depending on whether I’ve eaten breakfast or not). When I’m unfit, I run faster. This sounds counterintuitive but is actually more a lack of control. I’ve been running recently closer to 6:00min/km, which has no added benefit and sails me closer to the injury sun.
The trouble I find is that easy pace is a concentrative pace. A lot of attention needs to be paid to stick to it. One thing I love about running (particularly longer runs) is the ability to let my mind loose; like taking your dog to the woods where you can just let it off it’s lead to head off in any wild, crazy direction it chooses. Easy pace is like a choke collar, or a short-lead that enforces good behaviours.
After the run I felt great. Today, back at work, less so. I’m a little bit confuzzled at times. Nevertheless, I’m going to set some training goals for the week and see how I react to them.
Focus needs to be to keep easy pace easy. I also think it’s important to start opening out the legs a little bit too, to rebuild good form. I’ll look to structure the week:
Monday
Rest
Tuesday
Intervals: 1mi warm-up then 3x 1km (HM Pace) / 200m (Easy Pace) and 1mi cooldown.
Recovery on exercise bike plus mobility-focussed strength session
Wednesday
5km at easy pace
Thursday
4mi consisting of 1mi warm-up, 2mi marathon pace, 1mi cooldown
Recovery on exercise bike
Friday
Strength session
Recovery on exercise bike
Saturday
5km easy run
Sunday
10km or 8mi (depending on feel) at easy pace
It’s going to be a markedly big jump from recent weeks, and is not going to fall within anybody’s recommendations, but I’m not normal.
Oh, and Fun fact! On a lot of my posts, I seem to get a weird "Suggested Tag" as being laparoscopy, which apparently is:
lapar·os·copy
[ˌlapəˈrɒskəpi]
NOUN
a surgical procedure in which a fibre-optic instrument is inserted through the abdominal wall to view the organs in the abdomen or permit small-scale surgery:
"she went through lengthy hospital tests including a laparoscopy" · "endometriosis may be diagnosed by laparoscopy"
Happy running you ‘orrible lot!
Garmin HM plan
HU 10k Race Report
First fall and injury!! 😫