Week 4 Marathon Training Thoughts
Insta vs. reality… in this picture I’m smiling but I’m actually a little bit p***ed off! Read to find out why!
Hello fellow runners / people just interested in reading my blog! So this week hasn’t quite gone to plan unfortunately. I went out for a run on Friday, and ended up having to cut it short because my achilles wasn’t very happy. I occasionally get some tendonitis in my achilles and I think possibly it doesn’t agree with the running shoes I’ve been wearing. So I set out on my run, it was there hurting a touch so I thought I’d keep an eye on it. Halfway through my intended distance, I stopped for a few seconds to rest / move it in different ways other than running, and I tightened my shoe in case it was that. I carried on, but about 1 mile from my finish point it got angry and told me it didn’t want to run anymore. So I had to listen.
How did this make me feel? Cross and frustrated to be honest. And a little bit sad because as I mentioned in my previous blog, I have had a back injury for the past couple of years so it feels frustrating that as I am starting to feel better in that, my achilles was like “hello! Remember me?”. So if I’m honest, as I limped back to the finish point, I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself. However, I soon distracted myself and I reminded myself that it just needs a few days to recover, and I should probably do some achilles rehab.
Unfortunately, what this also meant, was that my achilles was not ready to run again on Sunday, which is my scheduled longer run day. So I had to be sensible and not go out. I told myself I would run on Monday instead and give myself an extra day to recover, because as my friend reminded me recently, we’re in this for the long game, so it’s better to be safe than sorry by pushing a niggle early on in this training plan.
Monday came along…. And it wasn’t feeling much better! So then I realised I was just going to have to miss that session. I have been at a Sport Psychology conference this week which meant I couldn’t run Tuesday or Wednesday either, and Thursday is my conditioning day. So I just had to accept that I missed a run. My irrational brain is telling me that this is bad, that I’ve deviated from my training plan and I'm going to get behind where I should be with my volume, and I’m annoyed about it. My rational brain is telling me that missing one session for sensible training reasons and for looking out for my body is not bad, and these things often happen in sport. Thankfully I’m listening to my rational brain more, but I am just being honest to you that I still have those more negative panic thoughts that crop up too, which is totally normal.
What is key though, is that, after missing a session or two, I don’t then try to increase my volume again next week… I need to either slightly reduce or stay similar until my achilles feels like it has adjusted. What running apps or untrained people would tend to do is carry on as though nothing has happened and keep building, and in these situations it’s important to be mindful of what my body is saying to me.
So I guess what I am trying to show through this blog post is that sometimes training plans don’t go to plan – they’re not always perfect or linear. Niggles show up and you have to work around them, and life and jobs also get in the way too! Situations like this often crop up with my running clients too, and I reassure them that we can adjust their plan around it, that it’s not the end of the world and that it will be ok! So although it feels harder telling myself that, I need to listen to my own advice. Also, I have had 3 of my clients this week tell me that for work / life reasons they haven’t been able to do one or two of their runs… and so it actually helps knowing that other people are experiencing similar things! We (unfortunately) are not full-time athletes, we are doing these events for “fun” and training is not our number one priority in life. So sometimes we have to relax a little bit and go easier on ourselves.
Couple of images I like here to show what progress can look like
So. If you have missed a run, have a niggle, or feel a little bit swamped by life right now… it will be ok! It’s not the end of the world, and we’ve got this.
Me at my first sport psychology conference this week - lots of mental gains made, even if I was unable to make any physical ones for two days!