Yes today I'm positively 'BUZZING'! Not a word I usually use but very apt in this instance. I'll tell you for why. After several short jaunts since last week my ankle was still feeling slightly sore but ok. I have been careful not to over do things and ice the area when I get back home. Still being left with some discomfort after each attempt but being something resembling OCD or perhaps anal about carrying out the physio exercises twice each day, every day, Ove has given me. Wednesday I did a very steady 2.85 miles, setting off with Gill, Val and Tony from club and returning alone, I have to admit very dejected. However, still determined to attend the Thursday 'speed work for endurance runners' course I turned up in my kit intending to do the warm up this week, last week I didn't even do that. So after our tete a tete with Brian off we went out onto the track. Two lap warm up followed by some dynamic stretching. Everything felt fine. Hurdles? Yes hurdles, we didn't however leap over them in the usual manner, more a case of using them to attempt the correct style in which to get over them. Nowhere near as high as the professionals use and nowhere near as fast. The techniques used though being extremely beneficial in assisting with stretching and warming up. Yet another light bulb moment, I'll definitely be putting it to the committee that it would be advantageous to purchase some, four to six being sufficient.
So the session progressed onto the speed work following on from the previous weeks. I'm obviously a little out of the loop as the rest of the groups have progressed each week. I joined the (slowest) group - I'm not keen on that word but the other two groups were faster groups and were having to do longer intervals. This week instead of distance, say 50 or 100 m we did timed sprints. Starting on the line and sprinting until Brian shouted 'stop'! The plan was that we would reach the exact same distance round the track each and every time. With each rep I began to realise that my ankle wasn't giving me much, if any pain at all. I decided to push it and completed all ten reps. I have to say I regretted it afterwards thinking that I would suffer next morning. Oh well what would be would be, I went home, iced the area whilst having my tea, got in the shower, massaged my lower legs with my trusty 'Runners Rub' and off to bed. I was awake for a large part of the night with toothache (I'm in the middle of root canal treatment) and on finally getting out of bed to stay out I realised my ankle was not hurting.... I'm still smiling now after an emergency hour in the dentist's chair. Toothache doesn't even come close to ankle 'ache'. Buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzzzzz.......
Off to club tonight and a short steady jog with Tracey who's also suffering with injury and fingers crossed that things get better and better.
Reading a blog I'm following the author made a reference to yet another running website. www.runbritain.com is a website where as well as lots of useful information, runners can input their 5k, 10k, half marathon and marathon times for the year so far and obtain their handicap score and rankings. This is a quote from the Runbritain website:
The runbritain handicap scoring system is a unique way of measuring your progress and comparing yourself with other runners.
As in golf, handicaps go from scratch (zero, or even slightly negative for elite runners) to 36 with increments of 0.1.
To compute your handicap we take a combination of your recent best performances at 5K, 10K, Half Marathon & Marathon but adjusted for course difficulty and weather conditions using our special formulae.
This means that you can improve your handicap at any race as on harder courses you won't need to run quite as quickly as on faster ones.
I'm not particularly impressed with my handicap score of 22.3 but I intend to keep checking back and see if I've improved - once I start racing again that is!
BTW Eccleshill's Claire Elener's handicap is 7.5 she is also ranked 37/100 for the marathon distance - Mara Yamauchi being 1/100. Claire having run 3:09:20 in Berlin last month!
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