Recovery

We’re now just about a week and a half out from my Melbourne half-marathon training run (Sunday 16 October) and three and a half weeks from my Auckland half-marathon goal race (Sunday 30 October) and things are slowly returning to normal.

As I flagged a couple of posts back, this particular preparation has been significantly hampered by a lower back injury that had me off the treadmill for close to four weeks. But after some judicious stretching (prescribed by the physio) and a rest from running, it's great to be getting back into it.

That’s not to say there weren’t some positives from the break. The injury forced me onto the bike for several hour-long sessions. And while that, the occasional spin class and the stair machine, were all excellent challenges, there’s nothing like clocking up the miles on the treadmill.

Even so, I have decided to continue with some regular time on the stair machine (the Lifefitness ‘Stairmaster’) at the end of most of my training runs now. It’s a deceptively very tough piece of equipment. I progressively crank up the effort level from its easiest setting every two minutes until it reaches level 10, and then see how long it takes until complete exhaustion forces me to stop. So far, the most I’ve been able to manage is 22 minutes, but I make sure it’s never less than 20 minutes.

My first actual run back was an easy 5 kilometres on 26 September (my first run since 31 August). I reached for my back at points during that run but there was certainly no pain. Nor has there been on any of the subsequent - mostly daily - runs.

My first scheduled long run was a two hour effort on 29 September, which also went well. While I was sore and very fatigued for a couple of hours afterwards, and while there were some points during the run where I thought about cutting it short, I was pleased I stuck with it right through to the end.

I have another long run (2 hours, 10 minutes) this coming weekend followed a week later by the Melbourne race, where the plan again is to shadow the 2 hour, 20 minute pacers for the duration. Last year, it was simply to avoid exacerbating a left calf muscle injury. This time, it's just a steady training run over a very pretty running course in a wonderful city.

Finally, after 738 kilometres, I’ve retired the running shoes that took me around both the New York and Gold Coast half marathon races earlier this year. In their place, I’ve now been fitted with a pair of 'Nike Air Zoom Odyssey 2' shoes by my long-time shoe expert at The Running Hub in Sydney’s Potts Point (whose judgement I trust implicitly). He tells me these are the newest version of the Nike’s that I’d been running in and confirmed their suitability after filming me on their in-store treadmill.

And so far, so good.