cause it’s a long way down, I guess you know that by now

This injury is lingering much longer than I anticipated.   It’s been 19 days since I’ve been injured and 15 days since my last run.  And therein lies part of the problem.  When I first got injured I should have taken time off right away instead of denying that I was really injured.  For four days I still ran when I should have rested my leg.  

My tendons got injured in the first place by overuse in the form of too many miles, (although there may have been a contributing factor of alignment).  I don’t regret training as much as I did because I know I need to be pushing the envelope to hit my goals.  Minor setbacks are part of the game, I just need to manage them properly.  I do regret trying to run through the injury even though I thought by running 60-70% of my normal mileage that I was being ‘smart’ about it.  There are a few reasons why I didn’t manage this properly.  First off, I was dead set on racing the following week and I didn’t want to compromise my build-up.  Also, I have trained through similar pain in the past, admittedly not as severe.  And finally, I was in denial that I was really injured, probably because I didn’t want to go down that road again.

For the first week the pain was dissipating and I felt I was well on the road to recovery. But then, for a few days, I did not see much, if any, improvement and I started to get really worried.  And then after 10 days I saw progress again for a few days.  Now that it doesn’t hurt anymore, except if I try to run, the progress is less noticeable but I still see some gains each day.  The redness disappearing,  the thickness of the tendon slimming slightly, dorsi flexion getting easier and more ease while walking are some of the signs of recovery.

Cross-training is going as well as can be expected and I feel my basic fitness is still there.  In order for me to run a decent race I figure I need 19 days of solid running.  That gives me two weeks of good running followed by 5 days of lighter training before the race.  On April 4th I passed my cut-off date for the Brutus Hamilton race and on Monday I’ll know if Stanford (May 1st race) is a possibility.  Like I said before, I’m not too worried about racing well later in the season but there aren’t many quality 10 000m races available after May 1st.

Other than putting time on the elliptical and spin bike I got outside for a ride on the weekend.  It was a welcome change to see moving scenery.  I rode my bike from High Park in Toronto to Hamilton in 1 hour and 50 minutes.  Because I was riding a fixed gear bike my legs were moving the whole time, no coasting, which makes for a good workout.  On the ride I was able to average 34km/hr on Lakeshore.  I would stop my GPS when I was stopped at lights but the slowing down and speeding up at each light definitely adds up.

This weekend I’m off to Kingston to take part in the Endurance Summit on Saturday and then watch the World University XC champs on Sunday.  Half of the Canadian team is composed of Gryphons which makes it pretty cool to watch since I train with much of them. 

This past week I found out how fast I need to run in order to get carded (funded) for next year.   I need to run 27:52 in the 10 000m or 13:16 in the 5000m.  Much faster than in past years.  What’s even crazier?   Now I need to run 27:39 or 13:14 in order to receive Quest for Gold (QFG) funding.  The reason QFG is so steep is that they base it off of Personal Bests and then add a certain number of IAAF scoring points to come up with an individual standard.  I basically have to break Canadian records to receive provincial funding. 

Training partner Chris Winter started a blog four days ago and has already amassed four posts.  I’m not sure how long this frequency of posting will continue but it’s entertaining so far.