Cautiously back to running

"You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself in any direction you choose." (Dr. Seuss)

Going back to running after a long break due to injury is in many ways similar to starting to run at the first place. When I was a moderate runner with two or three runs of length 6 or 7 km a week, I used to run around the Tveitevannet lake quite often. When I became more serious about running, my runs became longer, and Tveitevannet, with its 1.8 kilometers around, became just too short. For a few years I did not visit this lake at all. Now I am back there, and it is providing the perfect opportunity for me to go back to fast flat running.

Already right after the summer holidays, my physiotherapist Ane started pushing me to start running again. I started with quite short runs, with long walking warm-ups first. Tveitevannet is perfect in this sense, as I can walk down from home and arrive there properly warmed up, and then start running. For the very first run after the summer, I did one and a half rounds, just 3 km, and walked the rest to complete the second round. The lake has also been perfect for restitution runs; three rounds gave the right amount of distance and time, especially since my zone 1 running speed was pretty low after the long break. After these first attempts of flat running, I have been busy with mountain hiking, mountain races, swimming, biking, triathlon, and not the least training for Stoltzekleiven, so I haven't been running at all for the past weeks. Of course, all these activities have improved my form and made my hamstrings stronger, but running is a completely different matter. No matter how good my uphill form is, I am really completely out of shape when it comes to flat running. It is also the exercise that is the most strenuous with respect to my injury, so it needs to be treated delicately and seriously.

Some of my running attempts in between all the mentioned activities have not been successful. My legs have been tired from other training, and my hamstrings did not always feel well when I tried to run. Several attempts ended up being much shorter and slower than first intended, which was not too bad as they gave nice zone 1 restitution sessions, but not real running training. This week, as all the races are done for a while, I have finally been able to do some serious running training. On Tuesday I was at the Varegg interval training session, where we had fast runs of length 200m and 400m, with 200m and 400m jogging in between. Wow was this tough! My legs seemed to have lost all their ability to speed, and I was all out of breath with a very high heart rate. I had the excuse that I had not rested after Stoltzekleiven (Barry's Bootcamp on Sunday and Ulriken on Monday), but still... On the other hand it felt wonderful to be training with the gang again, and in particular I was very happy that what was stopping me was my breath and running form, and not any pain in my injury.

Yesterday morning I had perhaps the most successful running training in a long while. I had four progressive rounds around Tveitevannet. First round at pace (minutes per km) 6:30, second at 6:00, third at 5:30, and fourth at 5:00. I was really happy that I could do this without having to stop and without pain in my injured area. Then I walked for 600 m and then I had nine sprints up to Sletten Church. There is a short and steep hill from the lake to the church. My sprints up were about 35 seconds long. My initial plan was ten sprints, but I felt a sharp pain in my heel at the end of the ninth so then I stopped. I ended the whole thing with 600 m walk back to start. What is really cool is that the time I spend completing a round around the lake now, even with the easy 6:30 pace, is so much shorter than when I was a moderate runner a few years ago. Well, I suppose I was rather a jogger than a runner then. My last round yesterday took slightly more than 9 minutes. Next time I will attempt at doing a round in less than 9 minutes. If I can then repeat this two or three times (with a couple of minutes rest in between), I think I will be ready for a 5 km race again.

Training on your own requires quite a bit of self discipline when you have a schedule you want to follow. When I was doing my first round, I was wondering how on earth I would be able to go faster, but then I got warmed up, and round 2 and 3 went so well, even better and slightly faster than planned. During the fourth round, though, my heart rate was around 165, and I started to get exhausted. When there were 400 m left, I actually stopped. But as I was going to stop my watch, I saw that I was below 5:00 in pace (4:45) and that gave me renewed motivation to continue and complete. This is exactly when running with friends comes extremely handy. You simply don't quit when you are running with someone else with the same goals. The same thing happened during my uphill sprints. I had planned ten, but during the fourth I was thinking that perhaps five was enough. During the fifth, though, I thought "Come on only five left" and pushed myself to continue. Passing half way has an incredible mental effect. Suddenly completing becomes much easier. I really wanted to do ten, but I am glad I stopped after the ninth when I felt the pain in my heel. My heels are a bit stiff these days, something I never had problems with before, and I am very cautious as I know that many of my friends have had heel injuries. So it is important to listen to your body. But not when there is no pain. Your body (actually your brain) is programmed to always try to make you take it easy, so most of the time you have to fight against its attempts to convince you to stop.

The moment you are ready to quit is usually the moment just before a miracle happens.