Back And Forth

I was absolutely sure Derek told me I could try and start running every day once the daily mileage had reached 6 without issues, but now he denies saying that - must have been a misunderstanding on my part. I noticed straight away after Monday's 3-mile run that the hip wasn't feeling great and despite Tuesday going reasonably okay, it was not as good as Sunday and had to be counted as a setback, albeit a minor one. Obviously I sat out Wednesday - well, I did do a tough cycle program on the trainer with a set of 60 sec intervals on/off that had my legs shaking like jelly once I got off the bike. I've also spent between 30 and 45 minutes every evening on the trainer (my unwatched video collection is running out at an alarming rate). I'm not sure what cycling does to my fitness (running fitness is definitely reduced significantly, no matter how much cross training I'm doing), but it feels good on the hip and has to be better than sitting on the sofa.

Cycling really doesn't impact on the injury or I surely would have felt it on Thursday. Having said that, something felt off and I very nearly did not run but in the end I was glad I did because I actually felt pretty good on yet another 6-mile run, so on the whole I'm still making progress. The way to build on from where I am now is to take the body's feedback into account, and at the moment the feedback is that I need to take a rest day between runs. I will try and gradually increase the mileage of my runs, once again progressing carefully and gradually.

I know I have already run out of time. The Spartathlon is 7 weeks away and there won't be time to get fit, simple as that. As I've said I will still travel to Greece - the flights and the race entry have been paid months ago and we're going to turn this into a holiday. I will most likely start and use this as a recce for next year, which also more or less settles what races I should focus on in 2016.

Oh, and congratulations to Torill Fonn, who I was lucky enough to meet in Turin after she had gotten on really well with Maia (not entirely sure how they had become such great friends). She had told me that she would try and break the 48 hrs World record. She sure gave it a good go at the weekend - she did not get the World record but she did get the European one as well as the age group World record (not bad for a fallback option!). Congratulations, I'm in awe and feeling very inspired! I just need to get back to full health first.

4 Aug

6 miles, 50:38, 8:26 pace, HR 148

6 Aug

6 miles, 48:54, 8:09 pace, HR 152