I don’t normally find myself in this position. I haven’t normally completed my Spring Marathon so early within the Spring, and I don’t often complete a Marathon without a clear timeline to my next one. I do have a 10k and a Half Marathon next month, as well as three shorter midweek races as we move into the Summer, but those are all local events. I don’t need to do any specific training for those events, don’t need to race them if I don’t want to and if I wasn’t able to make the start line of any, it has only cost me an entrance fee.
All of which gives me complete freedom over the next few months to try to have some fun and wait for some specific goals to emerge. Before then though, I need to resume full training. I had planned for that to happen this weekend, however I noticed some pain in my upper back on Thursday which got progressively worse over the next two days. Thankfully I didn’t make the same mistake I have in previous years, where I either waited too long to get it looked at or tried to manage an injury myself. It’s an illogical decision to make. Yes, there is a cost to physiotherapy, but if you are going to spend x amount on a pair of trainers that might make you slightly quicker when fully fit, why wouldn’t you spend that money on helping you reach full fitness? I’ve also told myself that I don’t have the time for a physio session, but if you then find yourself cancelling or amending sessions due to injury, again that doesn’t make sense.
I managed to get an appointment last night, and whilst there was too much swelling for a full diagnosis, it seems likely that I have torn my rhomboid muscle. If that is the case, it is probably a minor tear only, because the pain level is relatively low and my range of motion hasn’t really been impacted either. I’m therefore optimistic that it won’t be a long-term issue, but for the time being I’m going to stick to steady base fitness sessions on Zwift to maintain my fitness without risking doing further damage to my back.
If I am able to resume full training soon, I want to give more thought to how I work my commutes into my training plan. I now have routines for both my run commute and bike commute that seem to work well for me, so I know I can do repeated steady efforts. Commutes lend themselves well to steady efforts, so I probably wouldn’t change things up too much, but particularly on the bike I could work either some intervals or low/high cadence efforts into some of my rides.
I’m also keen to do some longer rides. Over the past two Summers, I’ve generally been doing Open Water Swimming on Sundays, which has often removed my best opportunity for a long ride each week. However, I’m not planning on doing any swimming this year, and rotating between long rides and trail runs could be a fun mix.
It would also be good training for the one goal I do have pencilled in for the Spring/Summer, which is to do at least one bike packing trip. I have a couple of weeks of annual leave booked which could provide an opportunity to do that, albeit those plans are very much weather dependent. If the forecast is favourable, I want to be at a level of fitness that allows me to take advantage of that.
That is getting ahead of myself though. I think one of the mistakes I made last year was trying to push myself in training and races on days when I knew my body wasn’t up to it, which always led to a setback. For now, the focus is on getting back to full fitness. Once I achieve that, I can start committing to some more specific goals.
Scorpo Stories 