A change is as good as a rest, almost.

My hip last week was really painful, even on walking so I decided to ditch the running for a week and cross train instead. I had a physio appointment last week too, following up on my knee injury so I picked up some exercises to try to help my hip as well – it feels like I’m falling apart a bit. Hopefully the rest and getting my knee back in alignment will sort it out – after a week of no running it does feel a lot better, and so next week it’s back to the trainers and hills.

I ended up going out on my bike twice last week – once to do 25 miles on the way to work on Thursday and again on Saturday morning. The Saturday trip wasn’t exactly planned, until mid-way through 6 pints of Moonshine on Friday night when I agreed to join a group of regular cyclists for their usual 50 mile trip through the Peak District at 8am the following morning.
Despite stinking of ale as I arrived and introduced myself, I put in a reasonable performance all things considered – like not having ridden more than about 5km in almost a year, and then bashing out 25 miles just 48 hours before. At the end of it I was completely out of fuel and spent a lot of Saturday afternoon recuperating.

Other good news is that I managed a pretty respectable 1,500m swim on Friday afternoon too in 28 mins 40 secs, again having not swum for ages, which I was pleased with. I just have to contend with aching in muscles I’m not used to aching in.

From the success of this week I’m keen to include more cross training into the programme, if only to maintain interest. It’s just a case of finding the time to fit it in.

Is it time for a re-think? - week 13

Back into training properly this week and I really struggled. Both the 8 miles on Tuesday and Thursday’s 14 miles were just grim. I felt like I had nothing in me in terms of energy and really didn’t enjoy either of them.

In addition my right hip was really sore – it started a bit in Dorset the previous week, but was much more pronounced this week and was actually painful just walking. I think it is most likely to be as a result of compensating my gait to counter the effects of my dodgy left knee which has started to be more pronounced as I’m running tired and for longer distances.

So, a bit of a revaluation has been applied to the training programme. Fearful of overtraining and injury at such an early stage in the proceedings, and conscious of limited progress in terms of times, I’ve decided to drop the 10 mile run on Sundays in favour of a fast speed session of either fartlek or just all out speed work over around 3 miles/5km time trial. I may increase Tuesday’s 8 mile run to 10 miles, but will play it by ear and see how my body responds.

This week’s benchmark 3 miler was covered in a sedate (though it didn’t feel it) 24 mins 28 secs, or 8 mins 12 secs/mile. To put that in perspective, that’s marginally quicker per mile than the average speed I did when I achieved my personal best marathon time in 1999!