Compress sports does the trick but achilles flares

Sunday 24/10/10 AD ;
0649amish
Ran 13.25km on hilly roads and limestone trails in 1hr 36min 22 HR 123.

Hilly roads/limestone trails mix long run. Taking it nice and easy, to get a shortish long run on the board to try and maintain some of my long run strength leftover from Melbourne Marathon and City to Surf Marathon, with 6 inch 46k off-road less than 2 months away its important I get my long runs ticking over again. Again the compress sports calf guards seemd to keep the calf pain-free. Did this run after a 20minute break after the 7km tempoish/timetrialish high intensity short run. HR 123 at the end, which shows how low intensity it was, compared to the 180 at the end of the 7k run. Out and back splits were 48.04/48.18. had some hip pain about 60minutes into it, and had to do some stretches, and walking to sort that one out but it came good…Unfortunately I picked up a new injury on the second last steep hill, when the achilles tendon got a bit sore. 24 hours later its still sore. I’m guessing the dodgy calf muscle ran out of juice on the hill, and I put too much pressure on the achilles. So on the one hand a good maintainence long run, that will keep me ticking over for a couple of weeks, but also its onto the regime of icepacks, calf raises, and plantar flex taping, to try and knock this achilles tendon injury (minor I think at the moment) on the head, before it destroys my running for the year. So looks like a few more days break from running at least, have to be careful with this injury, hopefully its only a minor flare-up.

Sunday 24/10/10 AD;
0549am;
Ran 7km in 33.47 HR 180 at end.

Testing out the calf with my new compress sports calf guards, and good news is it was a lot better than last week.
Looks like rest from running for a week, and wearing the calf guards every day, has improved the calf injury significantly, and advanced the healing process, although I think if I ran without the protection of the calf guards, I might not have been pain-free… Took it a lot easier than normal early on so my pace was very even, although the usual pattern was still there. Was 25 seconds off my PB from 25th August 2010 for this course, so if I can get past the injuries, and hold onto the momentum (11 consecutive weeks now with a RHR under 41 (41 was my best RHR in 2009 a week before Melbourne Marathon, and at that stage it was my best ever RHR ever recorded since I started recording them in 1995!), so just itching to translate that into good races, the City to Surf 4.15, injury plagued Melbourne 4.05, and injury affected 46.53 Freo 10k and 22.06 5k at Masters are all signs of the renewed momentum in the last 3 months, but still feel the breakthrough race yet to come…)some good results feel close…
700m splits; 3.13 (wasted 10 seconds adjusting drawstring on shorts)/3.10/3.29/3.33/3.22/3.29/3.25/3.30/3.24/3.12.
3.5km splits; 16.47/17.00
So a slowish start testing out the calf, and then held that pace fairly comfortably to the finish. HR was a bit high at 180 at the end, although I finished in about 3rd gear, could have come home a bit faster…but not keen to do anything extreme with the dodgy calf. Just a big blessing to be able to run pain-free for the first time since the 20km mark in the Melbourne Marathon, at sub 5min per K…

The momentum is still there with a resting heart rate of 36 this week, and a double session on the sunday to keep things ticking over. The injury issues are still there too, but possibly am winning the war on the calf at this early stage, although the addition of the new achilles issue is very unwelcome. Its tight, its tough, but a lot to work with, and promise of PB attack in 2011 in a big way if we can keep going forward and keep building from here...
Not sure when I will race again, it mostly depends on the injuries, and to race well, I need to beat the injuries enough to start attacking intervals again, but I can think of 6 different racing options, if things come good before the end of the year. 6 inch, John Gilmour, Masters, the Pen 5k/10k, a certain 3k time-trial, and if going really well maybe even consider signing up for a track season with Canning Districts or UWA to sharpen up the speed more over 1500m/3k...are probably the major racing options left this year, if God helps me get past the injuries, and I can (a) keep paying the bills well enough AND hold onto the training momentum...