Love2Run

I hadn't felt my achilles pain much until today, but it started hurting today, so I decided I won't try running on it until next monday.

Saw the movie "Crazy Rich Asians" today for the first time.  It was funny, but the best part of the movie were the scenes of Singapore,  It brought back lots of good memories.  What a fun place it is.

I tried running today after taking a few weeks off because of my left achilles tendon.

The first 50 meters I could feel the tendon, and I depated about calling it quits, but instead I decided to change my running form.  Instead of pushing off with the calf muscles, I ran by lifting my knees and driving forward with my knees.  This caused me to have to take short faster strides, but it felt good and there was no pain in my tendon after that.

It is amazing how fast you can get out of shape.  I was really breathing hard after 2 miles.   I will try this distance this week and gradually work up from there.

I may try doing some jump roping this week as well.  Oddly enough, jumping rope doesn't seem to bother my achilles.

Another easy 2 miles.  Had no pain at all today in my achilles.  

Two miles in the rain.  It was warm today, 20C!!  Felt my achilles a little today so I went quite slow.  After it was warmed up the pain went away, so the last mile I picked up the pace a little.  

Ran 2 miles.  Today was the best run so far this week.  No pain at all in the achilles and I pushed it a little today.  I am getting anxious to increase the mileage, but I am not going to make the mistake of increasing too fast, or I will be right back on the injured list again.  I will continue with 2 miles this week and increase the mileage next week.

No running today because of bad weather.  Did some cross training and weights.

Another 2 mile day.  Next week I will increase this to 3 or maybe more depending on how I feel.  I haven't had much pain in my achilles recently.  The worst is when I get up in the morning.

Ran 1 mile for a warm up to make sure my achilles was okay.  Felt no pain, so ran 2 miles in 14:15.  Then finished up with 1 mile very relaxed.  Felt really good running today.  We got our schedule for track today.  I am a little excited.

Also did some skipping rope.  The way we did the skipping rope was like running in place while skipping the rope.  We did it as fast as we could for 1 minute, then 30 seconds rest.  We did that 4 times.  I was surprised how tired I got.

Did pretty much the same workout today as yesterday.

Started off with an easy mile to get my achilles warmed up and ready to go.

Then ran 2 miles in 13:55.  Felt a lot easier and much better than yesterday.  

Finished off with an easy mile.

I think I will continue doing this for the rest of this week and see how things go, an then next week will start adding in some faster stuff.

I am not really sure how to train for the 800m and 1500 m.  There are three of us on the team that are going run those distances.  The distance coaches are working with the long distance people, and we are under the direction of the sprinting coaches, but they have pretty much left us on our own.  

The same workout again.

1 mile slow to warm up.

2 miles in 13:07.  I have been trying to run the two miles a little faster everyday.  I have already come down more than a minute from Monday.  I don't know how much I will be able to bring my time down without having to change gears and speed things up.  Right now I have been staying in a comfort zone.

Finished off with 1 mile slow.

Same workout again.

1 mile warm up.

2 miles in 12:43 (was able to run it a little faster again today).  I think that is going to be the limit without having to change gears.  

1 mile cool down.

Did some rope skipping later.

I have really been thinking about how to train for running the 800m and 1500m.  None of the three of us really knows what to do.  We have not been getting much guidance from our coaches.  We are under the direction of the sprinting coaches, but they just tell us to go for a long run.  It seems to me that since 1500m is the longest we will be running, doing long distance runs is not going to be that helpful.  It seems to me that we need to be doing more fast stuff.