Normally I find myself looking forward to my first race of the season with excitement and anticipation. However, as I sit here icing my Achilles tendon, I am looking forward to my first race of the season with reluctance, hesitation, and with the possibility of my lack of participation.
The Grand Duathalon is often a season opener for me and it is once again on my race card. The gun will go off Sunday, May 1st and participants primarily from the greater West Michigan area will take on the 5k/30k/5k, run/bike/run affair. The question remains, will I be one of those people?
Right now I am doing a walk/jog-type workout (I am up to 1min.walk/4min.jog x4). However, it is not completely pain free. Granted "pain" is a relative term. The last time I did this workout I had discomfort in my Achilles, but it wasn't "painful" per se. Meaning the "pain" was rather dull and more periodically nagging, rather than a screaming, take me to my knees kind of thing. In fact, when my mind would wander, I didn't really notice it. I don't see this as a simple matter of staying distracted though. I still need to pay attention to my Achilles and give it its due care.
My next walk/jog session is scheduled for tomorrow. I'm planning on doing 1min./5min. x4. You see, after I do one wokout timeframe, such as 1min./4min. x4, twice and not have major issues, I move to the next level, which is increasing my run segments one minute. This method is not sciencifically proven to be effective, but it has worked for me before, so I'm operating on the "past practice" principle.
Anyway, getting back to the Grand Duathlon, my hope is that I'll be up to at least 6-7 miles prior to the event. If I can do that, I should be just fine. If it's less than that, I'll have to consider my options, such as maybe doing the first run, the bike, and then calling it a day. I'll look more carefully at those kinds of alternatives later. For now I'm going to take this a day at a time and be as positive as I can be. I'm currently really enjoying swimming and cycling, so I will try to stay focused on those aspects of my training. Clearly, time will tell how grand my first event of the season will be.
Peace.
Sam, I can only assume running is your strength. Therefore, the bright side is you have an opportunity to get stronger with swimming and cycling! (im sure im not telling you something you don't already know!LOL) If you have personal records in the swim and bike the run should fall into place! Stay positive and patient. Its all you can do.
ReplyDeleteJB
JB-
ReplyDeleteRight on. This is the goal. It's a challenging one to shelf my run or to be performaing it at such a sub-par level. Thank you for the encouragement.
Peace.