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Saturday, February 5, 2011

Celebrating small victories–10 minutes of running!

My last run was November 25th (thanksgiving day).  I hurt my calf muscle that day, and tried to massage/roll/fix it myself.  Late in December I went to a PT for the first time – and they found that one of the main causes was some imbalances in my hips, and something that I already knew, that I lacked flexibility.

So for the past month, I’ve logged 2 sessions per week at the physical therapist – usually 90minutes or longer for each session.  In addition to that I have exercises and stretches that I am doing every day – this takes around 1 hour.  That doesn’t leave much training time for anything else. 

My goal was to get my body ready for running, before I really start training for the season, and just see what happens.  I am signed up for the Eagleman half ironman in June – but I’ll treat that race as an learning experience/test rather than an ‘A’ race, my way of thinking about this race now is that it is a catered training day Smile

This week I was allowed to run for 10 minutes.  Even though it was at a very slow pace, it felt great.  Since then I have completed 2 more 10 minute efforts, and I am hoping to get to 15 minutes next week.

All of the effort stretching, strengthening and manipulating the calf/hips/hamstrings seems to be working – there is light at the end of this tunnel!!!

I have also managed to start back with swimming, completing 3 masters sessions in the last 2 weeks.  Unfortunately my work travel schedule has been getting in the way recently.

I am feeling very optimistic at the moment for what is to come this year.  For the next 2 months I’ll work my way back into some good swimming and riding efforts, and see how the running is coming along.