The highs and lows of training

Photo
Scotty Harrison and myself at the top of MT Keira. It was freezing this morning with frost that made some areas look like it had just snowed. We continued this ride over the three dippers onto the old highway up to Helensbourgh and back.

Well it’s been a crazy couple of weeks of training for me. I think the worst part of this week was the realization that I’ve picked up an overuse injury. I’m pretty disappointed in myself actually. Even with all the research I’ve been doing, and applying all the correct training principles to my training program, I still manage to get injured. I know now I’ll never be one of those gifted and talented types of athletes who can just go out there train hard and do well. For me, I’ve now realized I need to be very careful in the way I train. The minute I slacked off with my stretching, nutrition and recovery I got injured. In this case I know I’m injured because I just don’t stretch enough. I think now that I’m 35 years old and just an average guy wanting to do well I need to pay close attention to not just the way I train but also how much I need to stretch each day, what I eat and how I recover, because I just can’t afford to get injured like this again.
What makes this injury I have even worse is that it is not common. In fact, I can’t even find any information on this type of injury. The wonderful lady who gives me a massage once a week at the moment has been able to tell me I have an injury on my peroneus longus muscle which runs down the left side of my leg below the knee. I never even new what this muscle was until she found the injury. Basically what happens is when I run, during the recovery phase I’m experiencing a lot of pain similar to ITB pain, which prevents me from running at all. The minute I stop running it feels fine to walk on. My massage therapist has been doing a great job in treating it and hopefully I’ll be back running injury free again next week. Sometimes though I wonder. It feels like I’m constantly battling with my body to just keep the injuries away and I don’t even feel as though I’m training that hard yet. I guess now I need to start training to recover not just train to get fit.
The plan this week was to focus more on cycling then running but things fell apart somewhat here too. A worn out rear tyre gave me 4 flats in 2 days. I basically had to can 2 rides because I had no tubes left to keep riding. Yes I was left walking home on 2 occasions where I planned to ride 2hrs where instead I managed 30 minutes. By Thursday I had some limited success. I got up at 5am hoped on the bike and headed out into the rain. Apart from the rain I got to ride 1:45 without any troubles. I even managed a couple of good hill repeats. The only thing that I noticed that was that my bike was getting some death wobbles at low speeds (ie 40kph). I thought this was odd so I took my bike straight to the bike shop and as it turns out I’ve cracked the front fork. It’s under warranty so the new one should be here within the week. By the afternoon my morning rain soaked ride caught up with me. I developed a boil on my arse. After the week I had I decided to pull out the swiss army knife and fix the problem myself. I wouldn’t recommend this as it does hurt somewhat and checking out your own arse in the mirror is not something I like to do on a regular basis. Problem fixed, Enough said on that matter.
What I learned this week.
Recovery and stretching are as important as training itself. If you neglect to stretch or recover between training sessions, more then likely your body will breakdown and get injured. On top of this, I think to do well you need a lot of core strength. Why? Because I think your trunk is responsible for keeping everything together and in place. If you have a strong core you are better able to handle the fatigue associated with training, and as a consequence minimize the risk of injuries through training with imbalances. To train well you need to be well balanced for an entire session. The minute you lose stability in training the rest of your body will quickly fatigue. In a fatigued stated you are stressing out parts of your body that don’t like to be overused or over stressed. For example, you’re small stabilizing muscles that stop you from overpronating. The minute your core stabilizers fatigue then the more you will pronate, if you are a pronator, the more stress you will place on the smaller muscles groups that are responsible for keeping you stable. After a while these muscles which probably don’t cope well with a lot of stress give up and the injury soon surfaces. Even though I have an injury in my lower leg at the moment, the injury is probably a direct result of having very week core muscles. Time to address this new No1 limiter. I hope next week turns out better then this week. I’m still keen as mustard to train despite the few setbacks. My goal is to get back into a normal routine as soon as possible and remain as consistent and as injury free as I possibly can.
Here is a good link to some excellent core strength exercises
http://magthree.com/Thoughts/Core_Work.html
My next assault on the MT Keira climb will be in about 4-5 weeks time. Does anybody out there have any good training tips for climbing. I need to find another 10 seconds over an all out 19minute Time trial?? I’m not going to give up on this record, even if only get to hold it for a day or so, I’ll be very happy.

Happy training everyone and goodluck to those doing the City to surf this year.

fluro