The bumpy road to recovery

Good news! I made it through my first race since I got injured. It was not quite the marathon I set out to do; in fact, at 4.2km it was exactly 10% of my original goal. But, it was a start.

Spring into Shape is a series of three races held over, you guessed it, spring. I entered the 4.2km race for September, 8.4km for October and 12.7km for November. As explained in my last post, now that I’ve (mostly) let go of the marathon dream, I’m pretty excited about building back up to 12.7km.

Since injuring my foot, my runs have been limited to 3-4km plods. Even at these small distances, I can sometimes feel pain niggling under the ball of my right foot. So, despite knowing I could easily do the distance, I was a bit nervous when I lined up on Sunday 18 September  for the first race.

Happily, the race went really well. It was a gorgeous day, there were lots of similarly excited people and I was thrilled to be back at a start line. Aside from slight pain on a steep incline at 3km – and really, who doesn’t hurt going up hills?! – my foot came through for me. Hurrah!

One of the few nice things about being injured is I’ve stopped worrying about pace, time, calories burned, form and all those others things it’s easy for runners to get swept up in. I just want to run. This being said, I was happy to note I ran a pace of just under 6 mins per kilometre. It’s slower than I’d usually run in a short race, but it was nice to realise I’m not yet reduced to crawling!

I must admit my foot has been a bit sore since the race. It was fine until Tuesday when I made the unwise decision of running with a heavy backpack. Thankfully, I’ve now learned to recognise the warning signs which tell me to slow down and rest. I’ll be walking for the next few days before hopefully running 5-6km on the weekend.

And then? 8.4km on Sunday 23 October, here I come! I think I can, I think I can, I think I can….

 

 

 

 

Group decision

Last Monday, on a semi-sunny afternoon, Matt, Sarah and I met up for our first group training session. We hadn’t seen each other in person since that rather memorable evening at the Wesley Anne.

Rushall station was the easiest place for us all to meet then decide on distance and terrain. It’s funny when you’re in a group choosing a suitable workout; it seems to take forever and a day to get an answer because there are always too many questions.

“Should we run a flat or do hills,” Sarah suggested.

“I don’t mind, what do you guys want to do,” Matt tried to answer.

“I’m cool with anything,” I undecidedly said.

“Well I’m happy with either, I really don’t mind,’ Sarah added.

And so it went until one of us, and I still don’t remember who, opted for the flat road.

On a path parallel to Park St we set off from Clifton Hill through Carlton side-stepping the cyclists chiming past and families out and about enjoying the wind and freezing cold air. There really wasn’t enough room for us to run next to each other so Matt got stuck with the short straw, dodging pedestrians, it made for some good entertainment.

A little over 3km later we reached Princes Park and indulged in a little more umming and ahhing before settling on some sprints. We each raced through two 100 meter sprints across the length of a soccer field. It was just enough of an adrenaline jolt to cruise on back to Rushall.

I found chatting to be hard. I cannot stand hearing myself breathe while I run— which is probably why I am never without my iPod— so when I tried to talk to Sarah it seemed to take twice as long to get a sentence out with all that gasping in between each word. Yet I gave it my best shot and knew when to shut my mouth when the breathes outweighed the words. In the end it made the time fly by.

Back at Rushall we waved goodbye to Sarah then Matt and I continued on through Merri Creek. We were getting close to 9 km but honestly, I was a bit over it by then and really struggling to hold a conversation. Of course Matt was doing fine, with energy to spare and barely a puff in him.

He managed to run home after that which took his mileage up to 13 km, quite the feat!

Sarah managed 8km for the day, rather remarkable given she had run close to 17km two days before.

And me, I stopped at 9km, red faced but still energetic and very certain on my decision to go and get a coffee.