I don't mind coming back...

...if only I didn't have to come back so far! I've been taking it carefully over the last 2 weeks, gradually increasing the distance run, and never running two days in a row. My biggest concern at the moment is not my back or bad leg, but that I'll run imbalanced because of them and get everything out of whack. So far, so good. :-)

The first four runs were all in the range 5 - 8k, all around 5:30 to 5:45 pace. Gradually felt stronger after each one. The real test was to come towards the end of this week. Firstly, on Thursday night we had a track session; 4 x 400, 1200 (picking up each 400), 4 x 200 and finish with an 800 (picking up second 400). I went out strongly but sensibly on the first 400, feeling a bit breathless by the end. Around the second 400 I was starting to feel more than breathless. I had to slow down or I wasn't going to make it through the evening. Basically, I suffered through the rest of the 400s and the 1200, feeling more and more dead.

Luckily, there isn't time in 200s to run out of breath, so I was able to run them strongly, which allowed me to analyse my style and get it a lot more efficient. It's amazing how much you (I) forget with time off. Putting that more efficient style in to play on the remaining 400s made a big difference. I wasn't a lot faster, but I was a lot more comfortable.

I had started at 1:30s for the 400. By the end of the 1200, I was doing 1:50s! Ugly. The final 400s were around the 1:40 mark. Considering that I use to do 400 reps consistently at 1:20, that would have been pretty depressing if only I hadn't been so happy about the fact that I was back running! :-)

On Friday, I was (as Tesso once put it) pleasantly trashed. There were no niggles, just a general tiredness and that general muscle soreness that comes from working hard. This morning (Saturday) I headed off to the CR5k challenge. The challenge for me was to a) run 5k at a steady pace, and b) run 5k back home again. On the basis of the runs over the last week, I decided to start on 26 minutes (ie just over 5 minute ks) which meant that I was running by myself. 2:00 at the 0.5k mark indicated that I'd taken it out a bit (a lot) hard, so I carefully pulled back, remembering that I just wanted an even run the whole way. Well, I got that in spades!

Splits were 4:31, 4:35, 4:30, 4:35, 4:27, giving me a finish time of 22:43, and a pace range of only 8 seconds. No doubt, I was super pleased with that :-) :-)

Tux, Martina and Bayin were walking back (healthy lot of crocks we are), and though I was full of good intentions to run the second 5k, it didn't take much persuading (actually, none at all) before I abandoned that thought. Like Thursday night, I have no niggles, but once again my legs are trashed. In an odd way, it's a good feeling because it means that I'm working again, but I'm going to have another non-running day tomorrow - a swim looks like a good idea right now. In fact, sleep lookes an even better idea right now, so that's exactly what I'll do! Farewell and goodnight! :-)

Gnome