For the benefit of those amongst you who are not keeping count, it’s been just on four weeks since I landed back in Sydney after finishing my Camino journey and about the same time since I resumed running in pursuit of this little quest of mine to qualify to run the Boston marathon.
And it’s certainly been an eventful few weeks.
I mentioned in my last post about a back twinge I’d just picked up and, happily, that disappeared as quickly as it came on. Week 3 of the 12-week training program for the Auckland half-marathon (my first full running week since returning) went very well and I managed to clock up 44.34 kilometres, with a strong 1 hour 45 minute long run to cap off the week.
But in the following week, the back pain returned from nowhere with a vengeance and after a few increasingly painful runs through gritted teeth, I conceded defeat and spent the next few sessions on a bike trying to maintain some fitness while hoping the injury would just go away.
A visit to the physio about a week later confirmed a problem at the L4-5 vertebrae which he thinks should be cured in a week or two with some focussed daily stretches and an abstinence from any running. Long-time readers of this blog will appreciate that it has actually been quite a while since I’ve suffered any injuries so I suppose this one really is overdue. And while it’s terribly annoying, it has given me the opportunity to do some serious bike riding (my average session is an hour at a constant heart rate of 70-80% of maximum) and also to participate in some spin classes at my gym for the first time - which I’ve really been enjoying.
So hopefully all this won’t set the Auckland program back too much. But we shall wait and see.
I’ve also decided to substitute my 2 hour 15 minute long training run scheduled for the end of week 10 with an entry in the Melbourne half-marathon on that day. I had such a good time running that race last year (carrying a left calf injury), I thought I’d do the same thing again this year and simply follow the 2 hour 20 minute pacers around the course as my reasonably easy long run for the week. Looking forward to it - so long as the back has healed by then.
More significantly, I’ve also just made the decision to abandon the next half-marathon I had scheduled after Auckland (i.e. Hobart, on 15 January 2017) and head back to Spain for a while. I have to confess that I’ve been bitten badly by the Camino bug so I’ve decided to fly to Europe a week or so after the Auckland race and walk the Camino Frances again (St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago) followed immediately by the Camino Portuguese (Porto to Santiago). With Christmas Day in Santiago, it’s then off to Finisterre and Muxia on the western coast of Spain before arriving back in Santiago on New Year’s Eve. All-up, it should be about 1,200 kilometres of mid-Winter walking in around 50 days. And after some time in England, it will be back home and into training for Canberra in April 2017.
Although I love Hobart and Tasmania generally, it was probably the half marathon in my program that I was the least excited about, so it wasn’t too difficult a decision to scrub it - especially given the attraction of the alternative. And it’s still on the program for 2018.
So all that means that the BQ-Quest schedule (past, present and future) now looks something like this:
1. Sydney half - May 2015 (time 2:00:26)
2. Gold Coast half - July 2015 (missed with hamstring injury)
3. Melbourne half - October 2015 (time 2:18:04, with calf injury)
4. New York half - March 2016 (time 2:01:46)
5. Gold Coast half - July 2016 (time 1:57:46)
5A. Melbourne half - October 2016
6. Auckland half - October 2016
7. Canberra half - April 2017
8. Gold Coast half - July 2017
9. Great North Run (England) - September 2017
10. Hobart half - January 2018
11. Gold Coast Marathon - July 2018
12. Melbourne Marathon - November 2018
13. Gold Coast Marathon (1st BQ attempt) - July 2019
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