And - It's Off

It's a prediction I would have preferred to be wrong about but as it happens I did call it right: The EcoTrail race has been cancelled. I think it may already have been cancelled when I wrote my last entry but I hadn't heard about it yet.

It had not been a difficult prediction to make and it definitely did not hit me out of the blue but I am still disappointed. I was really looking forward to the race. I happened to speak to Rene the other day and he will put on some "challenges" but I don't know what they will entail yet. I'll see.

The funny thing is, I only signed up to the EcoTrail after the Dublin marathon was cancelled, because initially I had not fancied putting myself through all that suffering yet again. Now that the EcoTrail is no longer on I have actually signed up to the Virtual Dublin marathon, so I've basically come full circle. I'm still not much of a fan of virtual "races", and I definitely won't be doing that one as a proper race (and I won't include it on my list of races on the right hand side) but it's all that's left this year, I'm afraid. 

Ah well.

As a result of all that I didn't head back to the mountains this weekend but did a flat(-ish) road run on Sunday for 2 hours. Grand. I love road running as well, after all.

We've had two Atlantic storms the last week, which is very unusual for August, and, having grown old and soft, did a few more treadmill workouts when the outside world did not seem too inviting. With Zwift, that is actually manageable, totally different to what treadmill running used to be. I also have a couple of planned workouts in my head for the treadmill for future rainy, stormy days; hours of uninterrupted uphill running isn't something I can replicate in the real world, and progression runs on the treadmill are a completely different beast to doing them on the road, so there's added value in that.

Sadly, my indoor cycle trainer seems to have died a few days ago. It had starting to get wonky a couple of weeks ago, the Bluetooth signal was no longer working but I managed to use it via ANT on my mobile, but now it's completely dead and resisting any attempts to send even a single signal, so I gave up on it and ordered a replacement. Actually, an upgrade. Half a year ago I wasn't sure if I would end up actually using it, so I had opted for the cheapest model that still satisfied my requirements, but after 6 months of virtually daily use, sometimes twice, I know it will be used and I'm going a bit more upmarket. 

Hill Training

Training keeps going really well, I am really pleased with how it is going. I haven't felt as good for at least three years, and my HR and pace numbers support that as well. It looks like I have, once again, accidentally stumbled into a training regime that works, though the final proof of that is of course still to come.

As always, it's not all plain sailing and I do have a couple if issues. A couple of months ago my right foot was a bit swollen and bit tender to the touch. Also, when running it felt like my socks were scrunched up underneath the balls of my foot. I have heard that Morton's neuroma feels like that but can't tell if it was that or not. However, it went away eventually. Then, one morning about 2 weeks ago I was walking up a couple of steps in my house and felt "something" give, but it was manageable. I went for a run and didn't even notice it but later that day my foot later started swelling up again and it became a bit uncomfortable.

That was two weeks ago and it seems to have settled down again. The foot is still a little bit swollen but I can only tell if I compare my two feet directly to each other. It doesn't hurt, and I can curl my toes again, which I could not do a week ago. So, all in all, not too bad, but something to keep an eye on.

I had a great run on Sugarloaf last week. Instead of tagging two or three different mountains as I had done for most of my mountain runs I ran three laps on the Great Sugarloaf trail, which is the steepest and most technical part of my mountain runs anyway. I was pretty happy how that was going, and I ran for close to four hours, so it definitely was a good workout in its own right.

This Sunday I did something completely different. It was something I had been planning for a while, and a first rainy Sunday in a while provided a good opportunity. I hopped on the treadmill (obviously using Zwift to alleviate the boredom), set the treadmill to 5% incline, and ran for 2.5 hours. It was meant as a strengthening session for the calves but actually they still felt pretty good even at the end, so I'll probably give it another go, this time with a steeper incline. It's something the treadmill is excellent for - I just don't have a mountain around me where I can run uphill for several hours without it flattening out.

On the downside, the new Covid restrictions that came in just the other day make me doubt if the race will still be able to go ahead. It will, however, not change my training. Of course I would prefer if there were a race at the end of it, but I'm not running to race, I'm running because I love it, and will continue to do so.

Hope Dies Last

I don't want to be too hopeful. The last two years my performances have completely tanked (after already declining for three years before that) and I have on more than one occasion thought I might have turned the corner, only to be taught yet another painful lesson at my next race. So, let's not jump to conclusions just yet.

However, there are definitely positive signs. I did a mile time trial a couple of month ago that was faster than any mile I had run for a few years, even if it was still slower than my 10k used to be. But that's progress. And now that I have committed to running the Ecotrail again, I can actually compare my training to last year and actually it's looking pretty good. 

I had been battling with the problem that my legs just could not take the training mileage any more but every time I reduced my mileage to get the legs back into recovery mode, my fitness completely tanked. I might finally have found the solution: cycling!

I have stumbled into this completely by accident. I have been cycling to work for a couple of years but cycling for about half an hour at a time just does not have much impact, at least not at my level. But when we went into lockdown back in March, I started to do far longer training rides, albeit virtually on the Zwift platform. Two months ago I actually started following a proper training plan that has three to five workouts per week and boy, some of those workouts are brutal! But I have to say I am impressed. The level seems to be just right - the workouts are challenging but (usually) doable. On more than one occasion I was convinced I would not be able to finish the workout and just kept hanging on by my fingertips but somehow managed to hang on. That's a well designed training plan - tough but just about manageable.

I had two failures: on one occasion my legs started cramping rather badly and I just could not continue. That had been after doing a 3 hour mountain run in the morning, so maybe should not have come as a complete surprise. The other occasion was just the other day when the legs just did not have any pep. Or maybe it was in my head but whatever the cause, I bailed out. All other workouts have gone okay, even if I ended up wobbling into the shower on jelly legs.

The main worry for the Ecotrail are getting those crippling calf cramps again. So far I'm doing alright during my run training but when I do a reasonably easy bike ride later that day I can feel the spasms starting (and getting off the bike can be a real trigger - ouch!). I never used to cramp in training, so that's a new experience but my hopes that working up right to my cramping point might improve my resilience have so far proved futile. I still have close to two months, plenty of time to work on increasing endurance. We'll see how it goes. I'm reasonably hopeful.