Firstly, I apologise for my tardiness and lateness with the blog this week - but better late than never and all that...
Having had quite a month of racing in March, this last week was more about getting decent recovery in, whilst also cracking on with as much decent training as possible.
Unfortunately I found myself restricted somewhat by the same knee pain that had affected my training through much of the previous two weeks. I'm not really sure why - but I am definitely not complaining(!) - it didn't affect my races over this time, but I have definitely been feeling it in the training miles.
On the back of last week's blog, I got quite a bit of good advice from lots of my running friends that have had similar problems in the past themselves. I took this onboard and made the decision to bite the bullet buy a pair of support trainers for my longer and easier mileage training runs. I tried using support shoes earlier on in the year, unsuccessfully, as they gave me pain in my Achilles and were perhaps a touch over-supportive. That time I had changed brands, so this time around I stuck to what I know and trust with Adidas, and although it is still early days, the Sequence ST is so far proving to be a success both in terms of comfort and cushioning as the knee pain has started to abate a bit at last.
I have also found that I am now feeling the pain more on solo runs, and particularly in the early stages of my training sessions, about 10-15 minutes in to my running I am getting some pain which then seems to subside as I get warm and into the run. So it is possible that now it is more of a mental issue, as I am conscious of having had the problem and am now more acutely aware of any twinges?
Anyway, I have managed to plod on and keep going with training more or less as normal again this week - except for Wednesday when I took the decision to take a day rest due to the pain I had encountered in my speed session the day previously.
I managed to record fairly good mileage this week, but the harder sessions were pretty up and down, more due to general tiredness and leggyness from Saturday's relays than anything else.
Monday was a steady run with the running club, although the pace was fairly brisk from the outset as I think we felt a bit of a spring in our steps to be able to escape down the lanes and away from that bypass at last! We did 8.5 miles in total at an average pace of 6:10.
Tuesday's session was a bit of a disaster, I never really felt comfortable or committed to it for some reason - possibly due to the tiredness, but also perhaps as it was another solo effort, but whatever the reason I ended up cutting down to just 8 x 1 minute reps off a 45 second recovery, the average pace wasn't actually that bad looking back on it, but I didn't enjoy it one bit - and the knee pain peaked during the cool down which made my mind up to take Wednesday off completely to try and recover. Ice, magic bags of peas and self massage have become my biggest recovery aids recently and I had plenty of that on my day off training.
It appeared to have done the trick, and although I wasn't really satisfied with my run on Thursday it was a pain free session and more miles in the tank at least, as I did 2 x 2 miles at an average pace of 5:10.
Friday was a ten mile steady effort at 6:25 pace and was again largely pain free and another box ticked.
I decided to do a park run on Saturday morning as a substitute session for my two poor mid-week ones and thankfully I was joined by Luke Minns so we added a 30 minute warm up and cool down on either side of Blackpool Park Run which we tempo' at just over 5:20 pace. 16:24 for the 5k was a pleasing enough run in the rain and damp underfoot conditions through the woods.
I finished the week off with a really strong long run on Sunday, I did 16.5 miles at an average pace of 6:08, starting gentle at 6:50 pace and working my way down to 6:20 by half way and getting below 6 minute mileing for all of the second half miles.
The week ended a lot stronger than it started and hopefully I am now over the worst of the knee pain and able to crack on more again from here.
Total mileage for the week: 72.5
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:23
Total mileage for month of March: 294.5
Total mileage so far this month (April): 28
Total mileage for 2017: 888.5
Average miles per day 2017: 9.66
