End of week reflections on my running and general health, but mainly my running.
Question I entered the week with: Can the Achilles tendon in my right leg handle exercise that isn’t just stretches and walking? It was a week for testing.
I’ve read many times before with Achilles issues try to be as active as possible so I’ve kept to that the last few weeks, walking whenever I can and getting back to doing stretches and raises more.
Monday I spent 15 minutes trying various stretches and raises, before moving onto little jumps. Little jumps are a decent test of how my Achilles will respond during running. Achilles felt OKish so decided on Tuesday I’d give a slow run a go, head down to the park and try something. If the Achilles hurts too much can just head home.
The first run was a real test, to learn how the Achilles feels, hurts, settles once I get going, and how it feels to run with the ache or pain from the Achilles. I managed a slow 5km and decided to set the effort from this run as a benchmark for any further running.
After the run on a scale of 0 to 10 I recorded how the pain felt:
- Before the run
- At the start of the run
- During the run
- At the end of the run
- After the run
Wednesday I went again, Thursday I deliberately had a rest (didn’t want to aggravate the Achilles with too much running use so soon) and then hit a three day streak from Friday. After each run I recorded the pain. Laps of the park and really dull but I’ve listened to music to help me round. Ended the week having done 5 runs.
Monday: rest from running
Tuesday: 5.48km, 5:48 minutes per km, 31:48 minutes moving
Wednesday: 4.17km, 5:56 minutes per km, 24:47 minutes moving
Thursday: rest from running
Friday: 5.03km, 5:49 minutes per km, 29:16 minutes moving
Saturday: 4.25km, 5:50 minutes per km, 24:49 minutes moving
Sunday: 6.23km, 6:12 minutes per km, 38:36 minutes moving
(To help track this I’ve got a little spreadsheet. Yes, I use Strava too, but manual entry means I get to do a little analysis when I enter the data into the spreadsheet.)
I tried to keep the load the same across all the runs, based on a rough formula of a half an hour of effort by a pace of 6 minutes per km. If I went faster I’d have to lower the distance (Wednesday). If I wanted to go further my pace had to drop (Sunday).
On every day I did walks, stretches and raises too.
I entered the week looking to see what exercising my Achilles could handle. I ended it feeling like I can do enough of a training plan for the coming week. It's slow running but it's running in some form. After 5 weeks of next to no running — run in Bilbao that aggravated my Achilles aside — it was good to be back.
My weight stayed steady at 89kg, which isn’t the end of the world. Bring that down a little over the coming week.
I cannot be trusted to eat a small portion of nuts when I have a big bag of nuts in front of me. I need to limit my nut snacking.
Plan for week commencing Monday 12 August
- 5 runs, totalling 25km and 2.5 hours of running at an overall pace of 6 minutes per km. (Second week of this, see how the Achilles holds up.)
- Daily walks, stretches and raises.
- Keep an eye on and keep recording the pain from the Achilles.
- Have 2 weights sessions, light ones, to get that going again.
- Lose some weight.
- Tops 3 glasses of wine.
- Eat less nuts. :-)