Thursday, September 23, 2010

Dude, *there's* my breakthrough

Sometimes, you have a breakthrough workout. You go with a plan; when you hit the end of the workout, you feel like continuing. Before you know it, you've doubled your target, maybe more.

My runs lately have been capped by knee pain, almost like clockwork, at about 18 minutes. I'd run for 20 laps, or 2.5 km, walk a lap, then continue. At 26 laps, the knee pain would start; by 28 laps, 3.5 km, I'd have to shut down.

So I went in today with that general plan; run 15 minutes, walk a lap, run until I had to shut down. But I got to Lap 20, and I still felt good. Breathing wasn't too laboured, legs felt fine. And that put me at the halfway point of a 5k. So I figured I'd just run it out.

I thought I felt the twinges begin at Lap 24, but I relaxed a bit and they stopped. I was expecting them at Lap 28. Nothing. By the time I'd got to 30, I figured I had no choice but to finish.

At Lap 32, I started getting twinges. They didn't go away. But I only had a kilometre to go. (BTW, if I'd said, "Only a kilometre," six months ago, I'd have been being sarcastic.) The pain got worse, but slowly, and only a little. Steadily, but not a lot worse. I turned it up a notch for the last two laps. I sprinted the last half lap, though "sprint" would be a loose description; it might have been a 25-seconds-per-100m pace.

So, radical improvement. I'm sure the foam roller helped; my IT bands are much looser now. The new orthotics, too. But everything else falling into place helped, too -- the spinning, the swimming, they helped build the cardio aspect of it as well.

I'm in Vancouver a couple days next week, so I'll get a chance to check in with my buddy Dale. I'd hoped by the time I saw him, I'd be able to kick his punk ass in a 10k. For now, I'll settle for keeping up with him for five.

No comments:

Post a Comment