After the drama of the last two months with illness and injury, training is starting to get back on track. This makes me both happy and relieved. I'm not out of the woods yet, but things are looking so much better over the last week. This last week, I set out with the intention to push the distance back up to close to my original training plan. After hitting 20k the week before (and with a very painful and stiff hip after) I pushed the distance 30% further. This left me utterly wiped out...
Normally I wouldn't up distance so much during the training stage, but I've been behind on my schedule. With only 3 weeks until challenge 1 - 50km it meant I need to push it. Drastic circumstances require drastic measures. I was taking a bit of a gamble, but having faith in my rehab enough to get me around 27km.
All I needed to do was survive this 27km and I know that I can finish a 50K in the legs. Even more so setting off fasted once again (no breakfast or food prior to the run. While I'm crazy, I'm not an idiot and this was the first time in this whole training plan that I took anything other than water with me. A small snack bag of peanuts and two energy gels was about it. I had a 12km stop with one of the gels and the peanuts, with the remaining gel at 20km. That didn't exactly fill the tank as my watch showed I'd gone through 4500 calories by the end of the run, and I'd only put about 400 calories back in me; but going for the longest training distance yet meant I needed to at least put something back in me for the large section of going uphill in the second half of my run.
I also managed to really test the hip on a downhill stretch of trail which I ran at speed to test my hip under pressure during the first half of my run. It was bumpy, but it held out. A deliberate move to see if there were any especially weak points of failure. I'm glad to say there was no major issues!
The hip tightened around 20K, but having seen the physio the other day, we now know that (as I suspected) both the left glute and hip flexors are much weaker that side than on my good leg. Now we know this we can treat it, so I'm armed with some easy strengthening and activation exercises to get the left leg functioning better and reduce the hip flexor pain I'm getting.
The stats are looking better. My VO2 Max is at 39 for that run, meaning that I'm getting fitter and now I'm in the good range. The engine is working well, basically. It's just the axel and wheels I need to bring up to speed.
This is the progress chart as of today (I've taken Monday and Tuesday off this week due to treatment, but running again this evening). Fitness is ratcheting up each week after the long run, and the fatigue peaks (red line) are showing the intense effort on those days.
I'm tracking carefully the effort and recovery right now as the last thing I need is to re-injure myself. It's a balancing act for sure right now in order to get to that 50K in just over two weeks time.
I got around that 27km in 4hrs 10 mins. In the circumstances I'll take that given it was trail, I was fully loaded with pack and water, I was fasted, and I'm just returning from injury.
Check out the video:
I have to say that after that run I was F*cked though. Utterly drained. I was sore for a couple of days and craved protein (which I've started to take immediately after runs now). I have one hard weekend of training left ahead of the 50k. I have an issue though... Mother's Day.
Normally I'd switch my long run to the Saturday, but family commitments and tickets to the Rugby mean that I don't have a 6 hour window that day. Sunday being Mother's day and the day the clocks change losing an hour, means that I'd have to get up at 3am to run a straight 30km and be back in time to make breakfast. I can't take a huge chunk of the day from my wife as it's pretty selfish, and she does a huge amount while I'm out on the trails. This means I need to get creative with training.
This means a number of back to backs starting from today: 6km / 7km / 10km / 15km / 14km - 52km in short order on Wed/Thu/Fri/Sat/Sun (early). That should sufficiently spank my ass and put enough through my legs for the taper for the 13 days after where I'll cut the distances back dramatically. I'll mix treadmill, road and trail across these to mix surfaces and inclines. If it had been a straight 30k I'd have fully fuelled throughout, but I aim to fuel only on the Saturday and Sunday runs just to get my stomach used to taking supplements again (gels and Tailwind drink mix). After last year's lockdown 53k exploits and the story of how I tweaked my hamstring halfway through that, I'm keen not to repeat the stomach experience I had. You can read about that here:
As you can see from the past post, ultra marathons NEVER go smoothly. It's just a matter of being prepared for when shit (quite literally, in that case) happens. Things will go wrong. You have to expect it and have a contingency plan for when it does. Stomach upset, blisters, kit failure, weather, laces breaking, twisted ankle or knee, trips and falls, transport, food, are just a few things that can mess up your plans. Be prepared for it.
That said, I'm in a much better place than I have been, albeit pretty f*ckin tired.
Thanks for reading...
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