It Was All Going Too Well

After the 10k race over the bank-holiday weekend everything seemed to be going swimmingly well. Perhaps a bit too well as it turned out. The 10k left me feeling quite fit and able to build on the longer runs. A speed session with the group of 400/800/1200 meters also went well which hadn’t left me blown out as those sort of distances usually do. The following two ParkRuns saw my times drop neatly into the twenty-six minute bracket with runs at 26:40 and 26:39 respectively, an improvement of just on a minute on the previous run.

Buoyed up by all this I went out for an interval session at the other local recreation ground that I use with the intention of putting in hard session. Each lap of this ground is almost exactly a half mile which gives times easy to equate with the three mile ParkRun. 

3 laps x 1/2mile, 5min rec. 

2 laps x 1/4mile, jog other halves to rec.

1 lap. x  2 x 200yds sprint, jog to rec. 

It was nothing that I shouldn’t have been able to handle. But hip/pelvic muscles started to protest on the third lap and instead of calling a stop I foolishly pressed on hoping that it would ‘run off’. Of course it didn’t and instead I wound up with a full blown injury that had me limping off the field. 

And so it was, unable to run for two weeks and still painful in the third. I eventually tried a couple of very short jogs and eventually judged it safe to return to the group runs. I completed this weeks session without too much aggravation but I was taking it very easy and not trying too hard. That of course put paid to my plans for a try at a good time on the 5k in mid June. I haven’t  actually placed a foot in a ParkRun for a month so I suppose it’ll be back to times around the half-hour again.

Luckily in all of this the injury doesn’t seem to affect paddling. It’s only painful when taking load bearing on the hips during footfall, and of course the day afterwards. Consequently I’ve been able to put in some time on the water and been trying to get more consistent times over the Hare & Hounds 4 mile course. Basically that boils down to being able to keep a modest pace going non stop. Using the Gymboss I’ve been increasing the time expended gradually in sets from three minutes out to now six minutes. 

It was on my return from one such session that I found myself with a job…