The following anecdote is missing a few details such as who gave the quote and when, but hopefully the general situation will be sufficient to make my point. Many years ago I was watching a documentary about the England Men’s Rugby Union team, and one of the props was asked whether he was 100% fit ahead of a specific match. His response was “You are never 100%”, and by that he didn’t mean that perfection is impossible when it comes to physical conditioning. Instead, he explained that due to the nature of the sport, you are always carrying at least a slight knock. The question is how significant that knock is, whether you can safely make it onto the pitch and given your condition, whether someone else in better condition would be a better choice to play.
Running is a slightly different scenario. For many, selection won’t be a consideration, and whilst perfection is still impossible, as running is not a contact sport it is slightly easier to arrive at an event injury free. That has been the case for the majority of the events I’ve entered, and of the events I haven’t started, more have been due to illness than injury.
Nevertheless, injuries do come along from time to time, and just like in Rugby or any other sport, injury management becomes key. There are times when training through an injury will help the recovery, times when it will very much hinder the recovery and times when training won’t make the injury worse, but will still prolong the issue compared to rest or gentler forms of rehab.
My current hip flexor injury falls very much into this final category. I ran today and the first 15 minutes were particularly sore. The pain did ease after that, but it was still a difficult run. My form was awful as I felt like I was limping rather than running and I had very little energy. I did enjoy exploring a new route from Draycote Water over to the Cawston Greenway, but the actual running was not fun.
My only pain-free run in recent weeks was the Windermere Marathon, which at least gives me encouragement that I can manage this injury whilst still continuing to run. During the week leading up to the Marathon, I only ran twice, and that seems like the right amount of runs per week to plan around for the next few weeks. I have a 10k in a fortnight and a Half Marathon a fortnight after that, so I’m probably going to stick to this plan until at least that point, possibly through to the triathlon at the end of July. After that I have no events booked until mid-September, so I can probably afford to take a bit of time completely off if the injury is still niggling, albeit I’m very much hoping that isn’t the case.
Two runs per week is nice and simple logistically. I’ll do one weekend run and then one midweek. Replacing some runs with bike rides or swims is no major problem, given that leading up to the triathlon that is something I would have been doing anyway, though I do have to be mindful of the type of running I was doing. On a typical week, I would have one weekend long run of upwards of two hours, one midweek long run of 60-90 minutes, one recovery run, one interval session and then either a 5k effort or another recovery run depending on how I was feeling. I also had a cross-training day and a rest day, and this schedule worked well in terms of building speed, power and stamina simultaneously.
As I’ve reduced my running over recent weeks, my VO2 Max on my watch has dropped from 57 down to 52. My watch is primarily a running watch despite being able to track other activities, and it seems to have more difficult calculating VO2 Max and training load through a multi-sport training plan compared to a running-only training plan, and I’m not sure the drop has been quite so dramatic. Whilst I didn’t feel great on today’s run, I did feel a lot stronger on Friday’s bike ride.
Nevertheless, my VO2 Max has almost certainly dropped, because I’ve substituted some of my hard training runs for easy paced bike rides or swims. These activities are already easier than running by being non-load bearing, so by taking the session easy, I’m losing intensity within my training.
This is something I have to be aware of. If I book myself in the medium lane rather than the slow lane at the swimming pool, that will force me into a harder effort, and I can push hard at times on the bike too. Probably not on the commute to work, but on some of the ride home and definitely on some of my other bike rides I can look to incorporate a bit of interval training.