First Full Training Run After Calf Injury

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, to mention them in turn:

1. Do more of the recommended non-running exercises to strengthen core and other muscles.  I have been meaning to do this, but it is clearly important and would almost certainly help!  For my birthday, Jane has bought me a book called Running Rewired which is about the detail of non-running training for endurance running.  Perfect!  And with the P^3 exercises too I have enough to know what to do, I just must do it.  Regularly!  Have done almost nothing today, but I am using the fact that I was going on my first proper run for a while tiring me out...  Will start exercises tomorrow!
2. The second thing was derived from an answer from Steve Palladino to someone who posted him a question.  Steve's great if you just post him, but I hadn’t this time as I figured this calf thing was just down to me.  But he mentioned something very interesting in his reply to this other person, and referred to the document he sends to all users of his plans.  So yes, I had the document, but had either not taken in the advice or ignored it!  In summary, what he was saying was that the marathon plan is really structured for people who are intending to complete the marathon course somewhere between 2:40 and 3:10.  That’s fast running!  Way faster than me!  I might break 4:00 or maybe even get close to 3:45 if everything is perfect, but no way am I getting close to 3:10.  Steve’s advice is simple.  If you are aiming at faster than 2:40 then up the upper end of the training goals to a slightly higher percentage of CP.  If you are aiming at slower than 3:10 then reduce the lower end of the training goals to a slightly lower percentage of CP.  This is all optional – for some the set targets may be just right.  But for me I think they are perhaps a little high.  He is only talking about reducing by 3 or 4 percent, but everything makes a difference.

Given that second piece of advice, clearly reducing the lower power targets makes sense at least until I am sure I am fully recovered!  But also, I had been finding it all very hard, so maybe I was overdoing it anyway.  It seemed to be priming me for well under four hours for the marathon which I think is faster than I can do just yet.  So reducing the target powers and therefore slowing down is my plan!  And that's what I did today!  The plan today was reasonably standard compared to my last training runs, so ten minutes easy run, then ten minutes that includes four very short sprints (fartlek...), then six lots of faster pace for a bit with pretty much walking to recover (intervals), and then twenty four minutes easy at the end.  I reduced the power targets for all the sections, so I was considerably slower than before but I finished with no calf pain!  Very happy!!!  It was an hour and twenty minutes in total, so the same time duration as the second of February when the calf problem happened in the last few minutes.  That run was at an average pace of 5:14m/km.  Today it was 5:58m/km.  A lot slower and only 13.39km compared to that last proper training run which ended up being 15.31km, so I ran 2k less today.  But that's probably much more appropriate for my age and fitness - so great!