Caught a Cold

I knew something was up last weekend. My 'body battery'* was showing a distinct lack of recharge after a night's sleep. The sleep itself was pretty sound but I felt tired. That went on for a few days before Tuesday and I awoke - again, the body battery wasn't recharging as it should - to a sore throat. That explained things. My first cold for almost two years.

I think I'm over it now as my battery was more recharged this morning, so I headed out for a decent run in the forest followed by an easy 30minute cool down on the bike. Despite the cold and feeling a bit tired, I did put in some solid training through the week with a better-than-expected work lunch 5k from the office on Wednesday - setting a new course pb by over 90s. Monday, I ran a some of 800 reps at a decent pace and in between those there was some solid Zwifting on the bike.

Looking forward to a few weeks of uninterrupted training....

* The Garmin watch stat.

Happy With That

It was time for another parkrun and I headed over to Gloucester for the Kingsway one. It was nice to catch up with my old chums Sylvia and Graham albeit I didn't have too much time to chat afterwards as I had to swap in the spare tyre on the car as I had a puncture which I can get repaired hopefully.

My achilles was stiff before the off and I put in a gentle 2k warm up, during which I could feel it loosening up and by the start it felt okay but I wasn't intending to push it just in case. I set off well back down the field to force myself to go slowly. My first kilometre was just inside five minutes and it all felt okay. By then the field was thinning out and I decided to increase the pace a little as it was feeling easy and the achilles remained in good shape.

I wasn't looking at my watch during the run. I didn't need to. I wasn't chasing a pb. Today was just about running comfortably and not breaking down. Turns out I was pacing at around 4:35 pace for the last four kilometres but it felt slower as I didn't feel like I was working overly hard. Yes, I was puffing but I was nowhere near the limit. My average heart rate today was 140bpm (peak 155) vs a ballpark 155-160 (peak 170+) when I'm on the limit. Combine the lowish heart rate with the surprise of dipping inside 23 minutes and it means I haven't lost too much fitness during these several weeks of slight injury. Infact, I might even have gained some!

Steady Week

So, the achilles is still feeling tight but does ease up after twenty minutes. Just walking around the house, I don't feel it at all. I'm doing some stretches and it is definitely no longer in the danger zone. I've managed to put in some decent training without any repercussions. It's a case of having the confidence that it's not suddenly break down again but equally I'm taking a cautious approach. I'm in this for the long run - boom, boom - so not going to blow it now. Slow and steady wins the race....