RISC And Recovery

Let's talk recovery first. After all, after running a 100k, it's rather important.

Despite me and my legs feeling surprisingly good after the 100k, recovery wasn't entirely straightforward. Or maybe I was setting unreasonable expectations; after all, that was a race longer than the distance most people will ever run, and it's expected to take its toll. Running short, slow recover runs, as per my usual recovery protocol, initially showed some great progress; after 3 days I was able to run properly again. However, after that is seemed to stall somewhat. I kept the daily 4-5 miles going for the rest of the week, and on the weekend finally increased it again, despite the hamstrings still complaining at every run, certainly for the first few miles.

However, and counter-intuitively, running longer seemed to do the trick and within 2 days I felt almost back to normal. The hamstrings are certainly much happier now and my pace has more or less come back to the point where 8-minute miles feel easy and comfortable. That's good, because the next marathon is just around the corner. Obviously it's going to be another training run and I have every intention of taking it easy, but it's still good to go into it without feeling destroyed even before the start.

And that brings me to the RISC part. I agreed to take part into a study at DCU, looking into running injuries. Thursday morning was my appointment. They took A LOT of measurements, from the length of my legs and movement angles of my knees to jump strength, box jump measurements and others, and then it was on the treadmill for 20 minutes, very easy at first but eventually cranking it up all the way to 16 kph (6-minute miles), which maxed out the treadmill. Actually, that felt easier than expected, I'm pretty sure I would have had a much harder time on a road or track at that pace, though it sure started to feel rather hard after a few minutes. However, it was over before it got too hard.

that's what it looked like, though that's not actually me

They had attached plenty of sensors to me, which enabled them to track my movement patterns for further analysis. Looking at it afterwards I could see that my left leg seems to be almost straight when landing while the right legs looks better. However, I tend to get niggles in the right leg, which is a bit surprising, judging by what I saw on the screen. Anyway, let's hope I won't need to follow up with them in the next 12 months; if I do it means I got injured again and they need to assess it.

Oh, and my Suunto watch all of a sudden from today on seems to refuse to connect to my computer. It still charges and I can still get the numbers off the watch but right now I can't upload the GPS data into the likes of strava, which is more than a bit annoying. I have no idea if it's the watch, the cable or the computer that decided to throw a wobbly, and it's hard to trouble-shoot if there is no feedback whatsoever. If anyone has an idea what's going on, I'd appreciate your input. (update: it seems to be my laptop's USB port, and I managed to connect the watch on Friday morning)

8 Apr

8.4 miles, 1:06:04, 7:51 pace, HR 145

9 Apr

8.4 miles, 1:10:48, 8:25 pace, HR 131

10 Apr

8.8 miles, 1:14:21, 8:26 pace, HR 129

11 Apr

9.55 miles, 1:16:39, 8:01 pace, HR 139

12 Apr

am: 2.5 miles, 20:00, treadmill at DCU RISC study

pm: 5.55 miles, 41:20, 7:26 pace, HR 140