It’s been a struggle to keep the running going these last
five years. In 2010 I was flying high, ranked as one of the best M45 distance
runners in Britain. With a couple of individual National silvers, a European
bronze and an England representation, it was a good year. Then it all went pear
shaped. Injury after ever increasingly worse injury forced me to keep taking
breaks from running and making comeback after comeback. I struggled to maintain
form and yet I still carried on winning National medals, albeit as part of a
very strong Salford Harriers team.
Hitting 50 this year I was hoping I might make an impact similar
to 2010, with a new age group. But it has proven not to be the case. I did get
up to some good form, I even made it into the Salford team for the National
Road Relay, where we once again took silver, but soon after that my running
year appeared to be over. Groin strain became hamstring pull became stiff and
painful knee. After struggling through training for a few weeks I eventually
stopped running. A short break and I was back running, gradually building up
from a 5 minute start, but by the time I’d reached 45 minutes the knee was back
to it’s worst, time to call in the experts.
I booked in to see Richard Mason at Weaver Physio, in
Northwich www.weaverphysio.co.uk. Chosen on the basis that Richard had himself been a runner with a
2:22 marathon best, so he’d obviously know how to deal with a runner, and all
the foibles that entailed.
Richard, being very busy and my working hours being all over
the place meant it was a further week before I got to see him. Turned out to be
a problem with my sacroiliac joint, one of my weak areas. Problem fixed and
more strengthening exercises to do, I went away with the happy command to start
running the next day, 2 minutes walking followed by 2 minutes running for 20
minutes.
Over the years I’ve done numerous strengthening exercises
but some of those that Richard gave me were a little different, and I can
understand why they work, so not only am I doing them religiously but I’ve
incorporated some of them into my work, to help my own clients.
Day 1 I set off on my 2 minutes walk, 2 minutes run x 5 and
it felt fine, though I could feel a slight ache in my knee towards the end. I
continued the same for the next three days and then, feeling a bit more
confident I upped it to 2 minutes walk, three minutes run x 5 for a couple of
days. I saw Richard again at this point and all seemed to be going well, I was
still experiencing a slight pain and stiffness in my knee and the groin and
hamstring were still showing signs of previous trauma – but things were looking
up.
Richard didn’t ask me to come back, I’ll admit that I was a
little unsure with this as I was still experiencing some discomfort, but I knew
I could always ring and book another appointment, if necessary.
With a slight improvement in confidence I decided it was
time to bring down the walks to 1 minute and increase the runs daily. So the
next day it was walking 1 minute, running 4 minutes x 5. Still not a great deal
of running and certainly not much distance covered, but I was getting faster on
my runs and things were improving, even if my knee was still aching towards the
end of the run.
I suppose I should mention, at this point, to keep perspective,
that although I wasn’t running much, I did continue to cross train; utilising
anything that didn’t seem to make matters worse. I was taking part in the boot
camp I run, twice a week, my clients benefitting from the fact that I hadn’t
done a long run prior to that so I was fresher and able to push the pace a
little harder. I was still doing kettlebell and battle rope sessions and doing
steady peddling on a static bike. All of which has helped me to maintain a
healthy weight and keep my fitness levels up above the average Joe. The only
thing I haven’t been able to do is push myself to the cardio vascular level of
my peer group in athletics, but that will come later, hopefully.
As things progressed I started the jumping up a little more
in running time;
1 minute walk to 7 mins run x 5
1 minute walk to 10 mins run x 4
1 minute walk to 15 mins run x 3
I took the next day off running, as I’d done 12 straight
days of it, albeit the early days I wasn’t covering much ground. Then back on
it;
1 minute walk to 15 mins run x 3
1 minute walk to 20 mins run x 2
At this point my knee was aching more than usual, towards
the end of the second 20 minutes so I decided not to progress anymore for the
time being but to take a step back. Knowing that I’d been ok for the first 20
min run I decided to just do one continuous run each day, gradually increasing
the time. At this stage I kept in a 1 min walk at the start, so I didn’t set
off too fast.
25 minutes on day one, followed by 30 minutes on day two,
etc. By now I’d stopped walking and today I feel good, I ran 46 minutes this
morning, some knee niggles at various points of the run but generally I’m ok.
My plan going forward was to continue around 45 minutes a
day for a few days and then introduce some light speed work before I go any
further, but I’ve just taken on a new client who I’m going to introduce to
interval work tomorrow. I think I’ll cope.
Where does this leave me with future plans?
Well I still have no plans to race, I won’t even think about
that until I can do a full on speed session. At the moment I’m not pushing the
pace at all, the knee hurts more the faster I go so I’m keeping down to 6 min
mile pace as my fastest. I will continue to do my exercises daily and I’m
hoping I can continue in my progress, only time will tell. I haven’t even
looked at the race calendar so I don’t know what’s coming up or what Salford
have planned in terms of relays. Before I race I’m likely to test myself out
over a parkrun, that way I don’t have to travel far to break down again. If all
goes well we can start planning 2016, at least loosely.
Before I go I’d like to say congratulations to all my
friends in Master’s athletics who are competing in Lyon, the World Masters
Championships. Naturally I would have loved to have been there competing too,
but injury put paid to that. There have been some great results, particularly in
the M50 age group, which shows me how far I need to go before I can even think
about aiming for the top of this group.
Written by Roger Alsop
