Week 12 Run 1

Since my last post there have been a few set backs that have put me a little off track.   A big one was an arm injury. One doesn't really think about how injuring an arm would impact your running, but my left arm was very bruised and swollen around the elbow joint, making it hard to bend. The picture on the left really doesn't do it justice. Given the important role arms play in running, not being able to bend my arm without pain was a problem. I allowed myself some time off to recover. The weather hasn't exactly been favourable either, and as a result I've been doing lots of staying indoors in the warm and dry. Sadly, I think my body got the message that the hard times were over and it could start to get lazy again. I was doing a lot of computing while my arm was recovering, which meant lots of sitting, which meant sore knees through lack of movement (the precise thing I started Desk to 10k to avoid).

Week 12 begins...

This is a photo from my final run of week 11. It was a 50 minute run not far from where I work. Week 11 dragged on a little bit, partly due to poor weather, partly due to a sore collection of chill blains on my toes, and partly because life just got in the way. So it's now Tuesday on what should be week 12, but I'm still calling that on-track.

Running for 50 minutes is quite the landmark for me. It was definitely type 2 fun - the kind where you enjoy the activity once it's over. It was tiring, though not painful. I didn't get any shin splints or calf pain, so that's a definite plus. I did get some uncomfortable tingling in my right toes though, so I'll have to investigate the cause. It's happened before on a long run. The first time I just thought my shoe was too tight. Don't think that was the cause today though. According to some quick internet research this is quite a common phenomenon. Some possible causes are:

Another sucky short run

Photo by Jonas Nordberg on Unsplash

Run 2 of week 10 was supposed to be a bit of a landmark moment as it was the first run of my training programme without any walk breaks. It was a short run, so only 25 minutes. I ran for 40 minutes last time, so should have been achievable.

Alas, the short run struck again and I had one of my least enjoyable runs to date. For a start it was freezing, and breathing in very cold air isn't pleasant. Then, quite early on my right shin started hurting and got progressively worse. To make matters worse, there were a lot of free roaming cows on the road. They weren't particularly enamoured with me running towards them and really didn't like my metronome, so I had to do a lot of stopping and starting. Cows don't bother me, but if I'm bothering them I don't want them to panic and step out in front of cars. So although I ran for 25 (painful) minutes, there were lots of short pauses for cows and vehicles. Not the 25 glorious minutes of uninterrupted running I'd hoped for.

Meh. There are good runs and bad ones. I'm not letting this crappy run deter me, though I really need a strategy for reducing shin pain. Annoyingly I'm not sure what brings it on during certain runs and not others. It's usually on the right though, so there's some sort of imbalance at the root I'm sure. And yes I DID do a proper dynamic warm up before running today, so that shouldn't have been the cause. More work to be done.

6k Milestone

Today I ran the first run of week 10 and covered 6km. (I'm not sure what happened to the big 5K milestone, I didn't seem to notice it.) Today I ran longer and further than I ever have before. The intervals were: Run 20 mins, Walk 2mins, Run 20 mins. The picture on the left was taken after I arrived back at work (excuse the hat hair).

So as I continue on this training plan I continue to surprise myself. Just a few weeks ago running 6km was a laughable concept, but I just managed it without much difficulty. It's not particularly impressive running 6k in 40 minutes, but it's impressive for me! As long as I keep seeing improvements in my fitness and endurance I'm not too fussed about speed. I'll worry about that later. There is still 19 weeks until the Derby 10K, so plenty of time for improvement.

I'm off now for a cup of tea. I'm still rather dazed after running for 40 minutes. The 25 minute short run this week suddenly seems a bit tame. I'm not getting complacent though. Those short runs can be nasty. It'll probably knock me back a few pegs.

A good short run!

I completed week 9 today, and although the temperature outside was absolutely freezing, I was at least rewarded with the view above. This week I finally had a good short run. After 8 weeks of terrible short runs it has now been proven that a good short run is possible. If you haven't been following this blog, ever since I started my running training the second run of each week is a designated short run. This has always been the least enjoyable (until this week), as I have always felt tired, my legs always hurt and felt heavy, and I usually struggled to breathe comfortably.

End of week 8

I've reached the end of week 8 and ran for 20 uninterrupted minutes today for the first time. Yay!

Next week is the second "easy" week, which just means I'm not expected to add any more distance to my training. During the last easy week I decided to experiment with cadence, because mine is pretty low (definitely more a jogging pace than running). I'll probably do that again because today I was experiencing some shin pain, which I'm pretty sure is due to my slow pace.

This article explains how increasing running cadence reduces the stress on bones and soft tissues, and ultimately the pain you experience while running. It also explains the danger of making any drastic changes, so a very gradual approach seems to be the way forward.

A good run!

Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash

I had a good run today! So there is such a thing. 

Today was the first run of week 8. The intervals were:

Run 15 Walk 5 x 2

It wasn't easy motivating myself to do it, especially when I stepped out of my warm office and into the cold breeze. However, my training plan assured me that one day there would come a time when I felt "fitter", and today I definitely did.

There were no objections from my leg muscles or lungs, the rest buzzer came earlier than expected, the hills weren't an issue, and I was actually annoyed when a car appeared and I had to get off the single track to let it past (in previous weeks cars were great because they forced you to take a sneaky unscheduled break).

I finished the run feeling like I could have run longer.