Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

Still doing the footbaths as much as possible and starting to throw in flex and proprioception exercises in afterwards, which have been going surprisingly well. Have been getting enough unavoidable time on my feet to keep me happy but will start factoring in some longer (but still gentle) walks now too.

Started the contrast immersion again last night, so will keep that up twice a day for the next little while, and somewhere over the next few days start following up each session with strengthening exercises. Fingers crossed for as rapid an improvement as 2 weeks ago

Event: Katoa Po weekend
 

While it was a very nasty turn of the ankle yesterday and I'm still a bit down on the whole thing (both the initial incident seriously reducing my Oceania participation, and now this just as at least the road running was coming right) I just need to look at the quick recovery I've already made once over the last couple of weeks and try to revisit it. So I'm feeling a bit more positive than you might expect. Once I'm through the regular RICE period will get back into the contrast immersion and exercises etc. Just a little short on the incentive front so I will try to post updates here as a way of making myself keep at it (don't worry, not on a daily basis)

Stage 5 The Slip (aka Rowe Road). Mass start stage. The main goal was ankle protection so I could get a complete result and beat the mispunchers but unfortunately didn't quite pull it off this time despite dusting off the boots again. Knew there was a risk of getting overexcited about the mass start so let myself drop right off the back of the M40 pack right from the line. Then caught up with the tail again as they all followed John R around the RH route choice and I did my own thing going relatively straight. At a walk/jog was keeping with the tail through to about 6 and still often had Paul T-S in sight after that (apparently there were a few somewhere behind me too) From 8, got surrounded by the W50(?) pack (I think our 8 was their 2) which probably pushed me along a bit faster than I was intending to go. Then on a nice flat, even bit of ground on the way out of 12, rolled all the way over on the ankle. Fuck. So was a long painful walk up to the event centre from there.

Incidentally I could probably give myself a perfect score for the controls I made it to, but as I almost started down the wrong re-entrant to 8 that can be my token flaw.

Stage 3 Kaiwaka. Gorse maze on a riverbed inter-braid, then a neat little gulley system on farmland. Unfortunately I couldn't have too much fun as my key goal here was ankle protection so I'd be able to get through the series with a complete result and beat the rapidly mounting up mispunchers. So went out with boots and an intent to walk. The boots worked well as there were a couple of near misses that may have been ankle turns if I was wearing o- or running shoes. The intent to walk disappeared pretty quickly as much of the early parts of the course were surprisingly good underfoot so was comfortable to jog around (but still kept a very close eye and feel for changing ground conditions). You'd think the going slower would have helped the navigation but had a run of silly moments through 4,5 & 6 (had to double back from 3 to get back on to my intended route choice to 4 when I probably would have been better off carrying on with the other option, confused about which open area was which on the way to 5, and navigated right to the corridor to get to 6 but wasn't convinced that was the right spot until I'd then relocated off 7)

Stage 4 - Napier Central. Mostly city blocks with some finely balanced route choice legs. Felt best running I have for a long time, which is good because there's nowhere worth easing back the throttle on this map. Felt like I was hitting the wall by 8 but got the legs back somewhere over the next few legs. Lungs got a very good workout though - there may have been reports of a steam engine heard in the CBD. While there was plenty of debate with Allan, Dirk, Hugh etc about what the best routes were and I often had different ones, there's only 2 that in retrospect I'd do differently (13 and 19). I also would choose not to bollix up the 2nd control though. For some reason felt I had to go past the back of 2 buildings, not 1. Winsplits says I only lost 30 odd seconds here but it was enough for Hugh F-F to catch me so even though he was on fire out of the start I still reckon it would be closer to a minute.

Event: Sprint the Bay 2013
 

Sprint the Bay Stage 1 - Woodford House. A mixture of tight building maze and long open legs. Best bits were what I imagine some of those European races through medieval cities were like (ie: awesome), but most of it was fairly standard sprint stuff (good standard, and I liked the changes in "style"). Started off slow but got the pace up once the initial climb from the start was over, but then had to pull it back a bit in the more rural sections of the map. Lost well over a minute at 8, tried to take on the direct route through the green stripe - a bad idea even with fully functional ankles AND failed to notice the depression was perched on a terrace so stayed down in the gulley. Think I had this same site the only other time we've raced here... and think I made exactly the same mistakes! Otherwise the only mistake as such was route choice 4-5 - I convinced myself there wasn't a legal way through on the more direct RH route than the one I used, but don't think there was more than 10 seconds lost. Also lost 30 secs on the confident fence climbers at 15, but apparently others lost even more and I haven't counted this as a mistake as I don't think that section of the fence is more crossable than some of the other forbidden ones on the map. Despite a bit of walking on the designated hill climb was still 8th fastest on that split!

Stage 2 Splash Planet. Started off with some pretty basic route choice legs around Karamu College then the sprint leg from hell to get into SP, then absolutely intense from there. Took me long enough to get into the map once in the funpark I'm probably lucky to not have had some real blowouts. I have a sneaking suspicion the first part of the course was designed specifically to get people's tempo right up to be too high for the main part. Was moving fairly quick and mostly barely noticing the ankle. Gained 6 places on the long leg although the legs and lungs did not enjoy it. Worst time losses were c 20 secs exiting 7 in the appropriate direction for the wet route choice to 8 despite not having seen it as an option so doubling back onto the dry route choice, and 1 minute when things went completely haywire on 18-19, I really don't know what I was thinking and when I realised I'd gone wrong it took far too long to figure out where I actually was relative to where I should have been. On the other hand, picked up a couple of blue splits, I think for the first time in a decent sized field!

Oceania Relay - Moore's Taipo on a HOT HOT day. Probably toughest 6km I've done for some time. Both controls that I lost time on (1 - not much time at all - and 12 - a fair bit of time gone there) were about dropping down off a plateau into reentrants on a steep slope, so I guess not keeping on line as well as I should have. A few route choices made by the ankle but for the most part they were valid choices. Would have liked to do the aggressive contouring from 12-13 but had to climb back up to the top of the slope and back down again. Overall not great country for ankle management and got a couple of further twists in. And in general started to fall apart physically around control 13, which probably had a lot to do with the heat but it's also noteworthy this was about the 45 minute mark which would be the longest I've done any proper runs of late. Think this will probably be the end of my Oceania participation and I'll try to get to the point of at least being able to do the urban STB races

C • So how hot..... 3

Current circumstances mean that I probably won't be bothering much with warms up and down on the days I do race this week, but it was kind of unavoidable today with the long haul to the start! Some impact-related soreness in the foot, sort of felt like it was below the base of the strained ligament.

C • suggestions... 1

Oceania Sprint Champs, 3 controls in town belt then the rest in Wellington East Girls and Wellington College.
Only 2 real mistakes but both relatively bad ones. 1st control didn't have my head into the scale at all so over ran where I needed to jump off a track by 50 metres south (but more crucially 15-20 metres up!). Probably about a minute lost there. 6-7, when I got down into the main W College campus somehow had my orientation wrong or got completely confused which building I was looking at, or possibly what I ended up doing makes sense if I was trying to navigate from 9 to 7? (Don't think I've ever done that kind of thing before) - anyway for whatever reason I ran just about all the way down one side of the wrong building. Which was a large one. And rolled on a loose rock with the bad ankle while doing so, putting recovery back a couple of days easily. And then, when I was finally back on track, spent a few too many seconds standing at one of the too-many-other controls in the spectator area waiting for its number to turn into the one I wanted. Easily 90 seconds lost overall on that leg. As further indication I didn't have my sprint-brain working for most of the course, also missed a track that was on my route-choice for 4, but as it happens the route that dragged me on to was probably actually slightly better.
Barring miraculous recovery tomorrow I will now skip the Oceania Long on thursday (which I was still 50/50 about before today's race) and aim for the relay on friday

foot sore on and off during the day, but mostly like deep bruising rather than as if I'd repulled something. Have decided to drop the heat baths, should have decided that before this morning as that's when I first noticed the soreness, and try to get more icing in on the active days

Oceania Middle Distance, Waikawa Beach.
Was never 100% sure throughout the morning if I should go out there today but after watching the world cup action and hearing nothing but good comments from the top runners about the terrain it was just too tempting to resist. Did go for a jog on the most uneven bit of ground I could find once I ws strapped up before making the final decision and the prognosis seemed ...ok. Just aware I was going to need a lot of discipline to keep at a safe speed.
So... the race itself. Got off to a good start, trotting along at a happy pace and navigating well. Somewhere along 7-8 it became apparent that speed control was unlikely to be a problem - even with fully operational ankles my fitness levels wouldn't have been playing ball. Probably only lost around a minute-90 to this point, a few issues with detail in the circles and drifited wide to the vague thing I thought was the track I was going to attack 4 from -despite the fact the real one was bleeding obvious. Lost a bit at 11, turns out it would have been safer using the beach route (but others went much further astray here anyway). But the real problems were 16 & 17, dropping me from 10th (and ahead of Eric Morris) to 13th. 16 must have been almost on the control before I started ignoring my compass and got dragged out almost to the stream. Took a long time to relocate then had to work hard to convince myself I had punched 15 - think I'd got a little brain-cooked in the open dunes. Then despite simplifying 17 down to a nice simple leg still tried looking for it well too soon. So a bit disappointing what would have been a satisfying run in the circumstances fell apart a bit at the end.
Despite the soft sand and scrubby veg being everything I'd feared in terms of ankle-risk, seemed to get through ok. Feeling afterwards it had been tweaked a bit but nothing I noticed at the time. A bit sore now but more tired-sore than pain-sore. Will endeavour to get a few minutes worth of ice onto it sooner after the remaining races.

Maybe tomorrow? I guess I've got another morning on my feet to get through first but at the moment rapidly alternating between feeling happy and confident about the foot and nervous about the outcome if I turn out to be wrong.

Event: 2013 Oceania Carnival & WC Races
 

The last 2 days have been all about ice & rice. This morning have started experimenting with contrast immersion twice a day (I think that's what it's called) on the basis that I don't really care if there's a small chance it will fuck me up completely if there's also a small chance of speeding up the recovery. After the next session I may even start trying ye olde rotational/strengthening excercises just to get an idea if there's any hope. My foot is obviously starting to feel bored, couldn't seem to keep it still and out of pain-inducing angles last night so it felt quite sore at first this morning.

As far as how the next few days look, I can forget friday and saturday. There's a remote possibility I could feel ready by sunday but should probably err on the side of conservatism. Will still aim for the oceania sprint (tuesday) though there's no hope that would be the run I was hoping for.