Ross Running...

Time will tell, but I have had a few days free of calf pain, so I tried going back to the training plan today.  Unbelievably there was no pain!  I found it hard going despite the gentle pace, but that didn't matter - there was no pain!  Hopefully that's it better.  We'll see...  The plan today was standard fartlek after 40m of easy running, and 55m in total.  I kept to the lower end of the power targets, but I stayed within the bounds of the plan for the run, so I’m very pleased.  Not sure right now if I do the next day of the plan tomorrow or take a day off to build up more slowly.  Not sure!!  As I said, I wanted to do this run gently, so I slowed from my usual 11.3kmh on the mill to 10.7kmh for the easy running.  And I slowed from my standard 19.1kmh on the mill for the 8s sprints to 18kmh.  Still fast enough to reach the planned sprinting power target but very close to the lower end of that!  But fine!  The only other ...

Easy day today (well, not today, but yesterday, because I am writing this post the next day... 😁).  After yesterday’s (well, Tuesday's) trickier one, I thought my right calf would be fine!  Calf was fine the day before after all, so no worries at all!  My standard speed on the mill for easy runs is 11.3kmh, but due to still being in post-calf-pain recovery I started at a mere 10.7kmh which was my standard a while ago...  Bear in mind these are treadmill paces, not the real pace which is typically a bit slower!  The easy runs to date have been 50m in time duration but today it was 55m – the training plan slowly ups the length of time for the easy runs which I think is valuable.  And I had no worries as yesterday's run was 25m longer and included fartlek and intervals, so today should have been fine.  However, after about 20m I could start feeling the calf a tiny bit.  But it could be nothing, so I carried on, but the slight pain didn’t subside and...

Thought I would post just to say that I finally did a completed marathon training run!  Yay!  Nineteen days after the calf problem, so not so bad.  Way quicker recovery than the calf problem last year, so that's encouraging!  This is my second attempt at starting training again.  My first attempt was on Feb 8 th which was certainly too soon!  Today was interesting because I had taken extra time off for my birthday and felt ready to restart.  But after the calf injury – the same calf as last year when doing the half-marathon plan – I investigated a little to see if I was doing anything wrong.  There are essentially two things that I am going to attempt to change, both of which were originally in the P^3 plans, but I just hadn’t really treated them with the importance they deserve.  I'll be paying attention now to try to prevent or at least reduce injury, and that is something I am clearly keen to do!  What are the two things?  Well,...

Only reason for this post is to say that my running shoes had been in use for several years and for many miles.  The Strava app kept warning me about it!  The shoes were also damaged in places, so I thought I should buy a new pair and get used to them before the April marathon.  I ordered them on Tuesday and they arrived last night (Wednesday).  A pair of Gel Kayano 29 shoes, which is the latest iteration of the make and model of running shoes that I have been wearing for decades!  So a new pair is quite exciting 😁.   I had planned to go to the gym today anyway and maybe do a little treadmill and/or Wattbike.  But the new shoes meant I had to add my Stryd pod to the shoes and go for a treadmill run to test them out.  I managed half an hour so didn't bother with the Wattbike today...  I could have run further but I was unsure if even 30m very slow running was pushing things as far as calf recovery was concerned so I stopped then.  I...

I wasn't going to run or post anything until after my birthday on Saturday as I felt it was better to give the calf more time to recover.  Time and the standard calf exercises are what it needs - not running.  But today I thought I would go to the gym for a Wattbike cycle.  Before the cycle I spotted the treadmills and was drawn to having a little go.  I was wearing my calf compression sock and figured that running very, very slowly would not be bad.  And I was absolutely going to stop at the first sign of encroaching pain.  On to the treadmill I went and set the pace to 6kmh.  That is barely above walking pace but it is probably worth doing.  There was no pain at all, I didn't track the run in any way, and all felt good.  After 12 minutes or so (give or take a minute or two) I accidentally stopped the mill, so I immediately restarted it.  I had been contemplating upping the pace a tiny bit but had decided to leave it at 6kmh.  But ...

My last post was written after an eighty minute run that ended up with some calf pain for the last few minutes.  That was six days ago, and I haven't run since.  The calf pain was there for a few days, but not too bad, and seemed to have got better in the last couple of days.  I considered running on Monday but felt I should l leave it resting a little longer.  Today in the plan was a very slow, easy forty-five minute run, and that seemed to be a perfect run to see how the calf felt under exercise.  Also, yesterday evening I bought a calf compression sock that feels good, so I wore that while running.  What could go wrong with all this preparation!  I started at my usual 11.3kmh on the mill (that's the mill speed - the real speed is much less!!).  It felt ok for two or three minutes and I thought the few days rest had done the job!  But no...  After those few minutes the calf pain was certainly starting and building up, so I slowed right...

I wasn't going to post anything today, as nothing unusual planned.  The run in the training plan was for 80m with a bit of fartlek and a few intervals.  Nothing too intimidating, and nothing vastly different to what I had been doing for the last few weeks.  So, in theory, nothing much to write about!  But I will mention one thing.  I think I said earlier in the blog that I had never run with a training plan or power before, but that is not completely true.  I had never done anything like this before getting Stryd, but this marathon plan is actually my second training plan attempt.  At the start of last year I started the Steve Palladino half-marathon plan, which is obviously power-based too.  But I didn't mention this earlier because after a few weeks of training I had to suddenly stop running and walk home due to quite a severe pain in my right calf :-(.  That injury took weeks to heal, maybe 6 weeks or so, and only started healing when I st...

The reason for this post is twofold...  Firstly, I want to briefly describe the training plan that I am using to try and get up to being able to do the marathon distance.  My fitness has improved massively since the accident, so that even a half-marathon seemed plausible...  But the thought of running a marathon even in ten hours seemed, quite frankly, a stretch!  So, probably, a marathon training plan made sense.  Secondly, the video that was taken a few days ago didn't really focus on my feet much from behind, and that is what is needed for people in the know to analyse my running form.  That's my thought anyway, so today I asked someone else to video me, and, of course, I have attached it... So firstly, the training plan...  I mention before that in June/July 2021 I bought a Stryd foot-pod, specifically to be able to accurately track my treadmill runs on my Garmin watch.  And the best gadget to enable this is, I am pretty sure, something calle...