Hi
Well, it’s been a while and I don’t know where to start other than saying things haven’t quite gone to plan lately. Much of this is old news as I’ve sat on this post for way too long.
I was quite busy for most of June with some end of financial year related work. Still plenty of work to do since then as well.
At the end of June I picked up a bit of a right glute strain that appeared after some 1km intervals. My training had gone well since the Half until that point.
The week after that happened I was in Sydney and had planned to run the Striders 10km at Homebush. A test run a couple of days prior made me realise that wasn’t going to happen. I could run ok at an easy pace, but as soon as I pushed any harder the leg felt like it wanted to collapse under me. So instead we took Isabel to Lollypop Land at Moore Park on the Saturday morning as it was her 2nd birthday on the Sunday.
Since then I’ve given it some rest with just some easy runs, and ended up getting a couple of physio sessions. After talking with the physio and reading a post by Speedy Geoff about 180 steps per minute (SPM) being optimal I’m considering that my recent hamstring and glute issues could stem from introducing more speed sessions this year combined with a longer than ideal stride. This could be putting more strain on the hamstring, glutes and lower back when I push harder as I probably over extend my stride rather than increasing the tempo. I counted on the weekend and found that I am generally doing around 130 SPM. I concentrated on reducing stride length and upping the tempo and could get to around 150-160 SPM, but even that seemed like a quick turnover. I’m sure with a bit of practice it will feel a bit more natural so I’ve started working on that along with a few strengthening exercises prescribed by the physio.
Around the end of June Jodie’s Mum had a horse accident that really messed up her right hand. It has resulted in six operations so far with at the very least another one to come. There are bone grafts, skin grafts and a prosthesis involved in trying to fix up her hand and in particular one of her fingers. Most of the operations have been at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle and as a result there was some to-ing and fro-ing for Jodie and the kids between Port, Newcastle and Sydney at the time.
Jodie, Isabel and myself suffered from some sort of nasty little stomach virus a couple of weeks ago so no running for a week there. Tyler seemed to escape it somehow.
To complicate things further I picked up a new hamstring strain in a completely new place (non running related this time) a few days ago and have yet to run on it, so it will be interesting tomorrow morning when I test it out.
With the City to Surf on the coming weekend I’m certainly not where I was hoping to be, and expect I’ll be going easy on the right glute and possibly the hamstring (again). Hopefully I’ll be ok to push through and maintain a red bib qualifying time for next year, but even that's not a certainty. I put a request for a red bib (SH1 start group) this year with my recent Half time and received it in the mail last week, but it would be good to earn it during the event itself.
With the limited spare time I’ve had lately my blogging has been restricted to reading only. My commenting and posting have gone out the window, hopefully to return soon :)
I have been running regularly with everything that's happened, but they've just tended to be short, easy runs.
June’s distance was down a bit at 165km, mostly due to taper and recovery from the Half. I gave myself a week’s break afterwards as kind of a reward and to break the routine up a bit.
July was even lower with the recent disruptions, with just 100km for the month. It would have been 99km but I extended my last run for the month to get it over the line.
I was quite busy for most of June with some end of financial year related work. Still plenty of work to do since then as well.
At the end of June I picked up a bit of a right glute strain that appeared after some 1km intervals. My training had gone well since the Half until that point.
The week after that happened I was in Sydney and had planned to run the Striders 10km at Homebush. A test run a couple of days prior made me realise that wasn’t going to happen. I could run ok at an easy pace, but as soon as I pushed any harder the leg felt like it wanted to collapse under me. So instead we took Isabel to Lollypop Land at Moore Park on the Saturday morning as it was her 2nd birthday on the Sunday.
Since then I’ve given it some rest with just some easy runs, and ended up getting a couple of physio sessions. After talking with the physio and reading a post by Speedy Geoff about 180 steps per minute (SPM) being optimal I’m considering that my recent hamstring and glute issues could stem from introducing more speed sessions this year combined with a longer than ideal stride. This could be putting more strain on the hamstring, glutes and lower back when I push harder as I probably over extend my stride rather than increasing the tempo. I counted on the weekend and found that I am generally doing around 130 SPM. I concentrated on reducing stride length and upping the tempo and could get to around 150-160 SPM, but even that seemed like a quick turnover. I’m sure with a bit of practice it will feel a bit more natural so I’ve started working on that along with a few strengthening exercises prescribed by the physio.
Around the end of June Jodie’s Mum had a horse accident that really messed up her right hand. It has resulted in six operations so far with at the very least another one to come. There are bone grafts, skin grafts and a prosthesis involved in trying to fix up her hand and in particular one of her fingers. Most of the operations have been at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle and as a result there was some to-ing and fro-ing for Jodie and the kids between Port, Newcastle and Sydney at the time.
Jodie, Isabel and myself suffered from some sort of nasty little stomach virus a couple of weeks ago so no running for a week there. Tyler seemed to escape it somehow.
To complicate things further I picked up a new hamstring strain in a completely new place (non running related this time) a few days ago and have yet to run on it, so it will be interesting tomorrow morning when I test it out.
With the City to Surf on the coming weekend I’m certainly not where I was hoping to be, and expect I’ll be going easy on the right glute and possibly the hamstring (again). Hopefully I’ll be ok to push through and maintain a red bib qualifying time for next year, but even that's not a certainty. I put a request for a red bib (SH1 start group) this year with my recent Half time and received it in the mail last week, but it would be good to earn it during the event itself.
With the limited spare time I’ve had lately my blogging has been restricted to reading only. My commenting and posting have gone out the window, hopefully to return soon :)
I have been running regularly with everything that's happened, but they've just tended to be short, easy runs.
June’s distance was down a bit at 165km, mostly due to taper and recovery from the Half. I gave myself a week’s break afterwards as kind of a reward and to break the routine up a bit.
July was even lower with the recent disruptions, with just 100km for the month. It would have been 99km but I extended my last run for the month to get it over the line.
Labels: Injuryfest2007
posted by PortRunr @ 3:29 pm
6 comments
