It has been a strange month or so since my last post. Things
have been moving in a very positive direction for my running. In general my
calf seems to be holding up well with a weekly mileage of between 20 – 29
miles, including tempo sessions and intervals. However I have felt that I
haven’t had a real sense of structure to my running recently. This is mainly
down to tearing my calf (back in February) and also having to sit out of the
London marathon this year. Though it has also been about being patient and
letting my calf heal, especially with the occasional twinges that seem to haunt
my running at the moment. Indeed it has been pretty difficult to determine
whether my calf has just been put through a tough run or whether I have
exhausted the muscle. This feeling usually occurs after the end of my longest
run (currently 10 miles) or after a hard session.
The result of this inability to understand whether I have
pushed my calf too much- either because of my past experience from pushing
myself too hard during my marathon training
or that I am just experiencing phantom pains in my calf- has led me to
feel in a sort of limbo. I am reluctant to enter the short, sharp and hard
races that the summer running season brings. At the moment it feels like I am
on the running equivalent of being on a desert island; you hope that you will
be rescued soon, but you do not know when. I know that my calf is healing and
that I am being able to do more with it, but I really don’t know when I can start
pushing as hard as I did for London. Until you really push yourself beyond your
current limits do you really ever know how far you can go? It is from this
reasoning that I am going to run the North Downs Race on Sunday
26th June. This race is over an undulating 18 mile course and should
hopefully instil a sense of confidence when approaching my marathon training
again. If this goes according to plan then I will try to enter the 5km and 10km
Sri Chinmony London
races in July. These speed races should then prepare me for my two
half-marathons (in August and September), which combined with my overall
marathon training should help me towards a personal best at Abingdon.
