Tuesday morning session - 6 x 1200m

What a difference 200m makes! Or 40 seconds! Stubbornly, I set off this morning down to Manly Beach front in light rain to progress the session that I completed two weeks prior - 7 x 1000m with 1:15 recovery between sets. Averaging 3:07 min/km for the former, in hindsight it was perhaps too ambitious to attempt to replicate the same pace for an extra 200m per rep, given the same recovery period. The first effort was bang on 3:07 pace, but unfortunately that was it for the session. That horrible feeling of lactate accumulating in the legs - the annoyance of your legs not listening to your brain when commanding them to turn over quicker! That's exactly how I felt as the session progressed, with the second to sixth intervals progressively getting slower - 3:10, 3:15, 3:19, 3:20, 3:24 (Average = 3:16 min/km). Nevertheless, all were completed with a relatively short 1:15 minute recovery. Having last completed this session in 2013, my previous best average for the session was 3:17 min/km pace - however this was off a 3:00 minute recovery. Looking forward, I have set a baseline today, and know exactly where I stand for this session. I will replicate the session next Tuesday morning, but rest re-establish my target pace to average around 3:13 min/km, and build from there. Recovery run for 40 minutes this afternoon - hopefully the rain holds off.

Monday morning recovery run

60 minutes easy this morning. Actually felt great the from the very start - something that is extremely rare for a Monday morning, especially following a solid weekend of training. Perhaps the unplanned 'recovery' week last week played a hand in that. Nonetheless, I hope that this feeling can last until at least Saturday.

Sunday long run

Early start this morning, with the alarm going off just after 5:30am (well, definitely early for a Sunday morning). Ran with the Manly crew this morning, with a great turn out of 9 runners, myself included. A steady 29km run from Boy Charlton Pool at Manly to North Narrabeen and return. Nothing spectacular in terms of pace, but just great to get out their and spend some time on my feet (with some great company of course) after a horrible week. Let's hope for a consistent, solid week ahead!

Saturday morning session - 5 miles at goal 10km race pace

I don't know what it was this morning? Was it the cool temperature? Was it the fact that being sick during the week forced me to actually rest & recover for once? Was it the fact that I have reverted back to my old university day lunches of two avocado and vegemite sandwiches? Whatever it was, I felt absolutely gold this morning, and had a great session. Returning to Sean Williams' squad at Centennial Park after a month of training solo at Manly, a threshold session was on the cards. Given my terrible week suffering from the stomach bug, the goal this morning was to simply stick to 3:25 min/km pace for 6-8km. After 2km, I was feeling strong and looked at my watch - which read back to me 3:13 min/km pace. I thought it must have been a typo, but kept running and decided to see what I could hang onto. It gradually crept back to 3:15 min/km by the 7km mark, and so decided to hang on for an extra km, finishing at an average pace of 3:16 min/km for the 8km. This was an extremely encouraging run, as I definitely could have held this for another 2km if I had to (although, it would have hurt a lot)! I have learnt over the years (unfortunately through more error than trial) to really listen to my body - so light of being sick during the week coupled with the fact that I want to race next Saturday, there was little point in going for personal glory in running a 10km PB at training. Nevertheless, it was fantastic to be back out there training with the squad again - I've really missed having these awesome athletes around!

One possible reason to account for the high rate of injury recurrence amongst distance runners

It's a shame to say that one of the single biggest risk factors for sustaining an overuse injury amongst endurance athletes is whether they have sustained the same (or similar) injury in the past. This suggests one of two things - either our athletes have some unidentified genetic predisposition to sustaining the same injury to a specific anatomical landmark, or that we in the medical and health professions are short-changing our clients by not addressing all of their clinical deficits resulting from their injury. Unfortunately, the latter appears more viable. Throughout my training as a physiotherapist, we were drilled to ensure that following any injury, a pre-requisite range-of-motion and level of strength had to be met prior to returning to their chosen sport. Whilst these guidelines are important, they do not encompass all of the specific areas that are compromised as a result of the initial injury. Consequently, it appears that we may be discharging patients too early.

One specific component of the injured athlete paradigm that is vastly gaining further exposure in the research literature is that of neuromotor coordination. Note that this is very different to 'strength.' In essence, 'strength' can be defined as the amount of force (typically measured in Newtons) that a muscle can generate by either shortening, remaining still, or lengthening. Strength is important, as it provides the foundations for two paradoxical components of fitness - both power and endurance. Both of these variables are simply derived from the equation: force over time - with the value of the denominator being far greater in the latter (endurance). Strength allows our bones and joints to move quickly, powerfully and/or for a long duration in whatever direction we desire. The muscles that are best suited for this role are those that are located more superficially (I like to call these the 'mirror' muscles, as these are the muscles that gym junkies like to spend a lot of time conditioning so that they look impressive when out on the tune); in scientific terms, these are classified as 'global' muscles. In essence, these muscles are mostly under our conscious control; hence we can chose when to activate them, along with controlling the amount of force which we choose to apply. Fundamentally, we condition these muscles by generically applying the '3 sets of 10 repetitions' principle in order to improve their force output (i.e. strength). 

Conversely, 'local' muscles are situated very close to our body's joints, and hence are not as easily seen as they are covered by our global system. These differ fundamentally from global muscles in that their primary role is not that of force output, it is merely to activate in a fast and coordinated manner in order to centrate and stabilise our joints so that our global muscles have a solid platform for which they can exert their force output from. Furthermore, they differ neurophysiologicaly in that they function below the level of our conscious control - in other words, they activate automatically in a feed forward manner in that we do not need to actually devote our attention towards. I am going to state this now (prior to elaborating further on a future post regarding the arguably flawed status quo of our therapeutic/corrective exercises) - local muscles do not respond to strength training principles of '3 sets of 10 repetitions.' This is why you will never see me prescribe internal and external rotation exercises with a thereband to clients with a rotator cuff injury, or 'clamshells' in order to 'activate' someone's gluteals.

Coming back to the original question - it is well established that our neuromuscular control is altered immediately post injury. The central nervous system adopts a compensatory strategy following an injury in attempt to off-load the injured structure, providing it with the best possible environment to allow it to heal. An example of this occurs when you sprain your ankle - without realising, you will rotate your entire lower extremity of the injured side outwards in order to reduce the amount of stress that would otherwise be applied to the outer ligaments of your ankle. Whilst this provides an extremely effective short term strategy, the body does not spontaneously default back to its original posture once the pain and swelling has subsided. As a result, your body is likely to adopt this posture into all of its normal activities of daily living. Running with an out-turned foot impaires stabilisation of the entire lower extremity, allowing the knee to cave inwards during midstance - which is a biomechanical cause of a vast array of common injuries including plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinopathy, and runner's knee to name just a few.

Nevertheless, it is important to consider that this is simply one factor that may contribute to your current running-related injury, and the relative weighting of this past history is going to differ vastly from client to client. Factors such as training errors, running technique, basic mobility and stability are all imperative variables to consider when attempting to determine the underlying causes of any running injury. As I commonly say to my patients, no two running injuries are ever the same, meaning that if I had 10 current clients with the clinical diagnosis of Achilles tendinopathy, I would have 10 very different treatment protocols based on the relative contributions of the above-mentioned variables that each client uniquely presents with. 

So next time your medical practitioner asks you 'what injuries have you experienced in the past,' hopefully you will better understand the significance of such information and how it allows them to tailor their treatment plan to your own unique presentation.

Thursday morning session - DNF

How soon is too soon? After being rendered bed ridden the past two days with a nasty stomach bug, I ambitiously (or stupiditly) decided to 'ease' back into running this morning with some one mile repeats along Manly Beach front with the Manly boys and girls. The warm-up run over Queenscliff headland from South Curl Curl sounded the first sirens, with my legs protesting every step of the climb. Luckily I arrived at our designated meeting point 10 minutes prior to kick-off - giving myself a 'much-deserved' recovery break. We started our first rep running down towards Manly, and I immediately got onto the back of Tom and hung on all the way down. I looked at my watch periodically throughout the effort, which continued to read a stubborn 3:12 min/km pace. Speed-wise, that felt about right, however effort-wise I was working much harder. That burning sensation that you get in your lungs that is generally reserved until the last few km's of a 10km race was present from about 600m in, and the legs turned to lead not long after. We completed the mile, and I was spent. After a 2 minute break, we set off for the second rep, but I lasted about 500m before deciding to call it quits. As most runners and endurance athletes know, this is never an easy decision - one where you have two voices in your head; one rationale and objective voice telling you the honest truth, the other screaming at you to 'harden up' and 'run it out.' Today, the former won the battle. Perhaps I was too ambitious today, after getting 'itchy feet' following 2 days of enforced rest. I will attempt an easy 40-50 minute run tomorrow (definitely no speed work), and hope to return to Centennial Park on Saturday morning with Sean Williams' squad for a 10-12 km threshold run. But as always, I will start listening to my body more and more.

Monday morning run

60 minutes of very easy recovery 'running.' Nothing too interesting to report - just day-dreaming whilst ticking the legs over. Felt better upon finishing compared to the first couple of steps, so the objective of today's run was achieved.