Hindsight.
It was a great start to the year. Decent base miles collected through the worst part of the winter, then moving into more structured, hard training in late February and early March. Smashing out the miles like never before. 180km+ weeks, speedwork, track sessions, tempo sessions, double days, back to back long runs. I was tired… very tired… but I’ve never felt as fit in my whole life. It seemed that every time I laced up my trainers I’d get another PB or bag a few more Strava CRs, fresh legs be damned. I was treading a fine line, I knew that. But I’d made my pact with the Devil - I wanted to run 100 miles in 12 hours at Crawley and nothing short of everything I had was going to be good enough to achieve that.
Running to the local track, smashing out 3 hour sessions, setting new marathon PBs along the way, rounds of applause from random people in the stands wondering what the hell I was doing when I finally stopped running round and round and round and round… and then that tightness, painful tightness across my groin as I started the run home. Not right, surely… but a few miles later it had loosened up again. Maybe it’s ok? Except that it wasn’t, not on these hard, long tempo runs. Not really on these hilly runs either. Easy runs seem ok though… And then a virus, wiping me out completely for a few weeks just before Crawley - not great timing but at least it’ll give my groin time to fix up…?
Crawley comes and goes. Not 100 miles, but close, painfully close. The niggle in my groin being subsumed into the effort and drowned out by the shouting from every other part of my body during the course of the race. But afterwards… not so good. Still, five weeks until GUCR. Plenty of time.
Except it’s not, not when you’re body is recovering from 100 miles of additional wear and tear. Hands over ears, not listening, maybe it’ll go away. My plantar fasciitis was once fixed by a 55km training run (true story). Maybe 145 miles is just what my groin needs.
GUCR comes and goes. But this time the screaming from the other bits of me isn’t quite managing to drown out the pain in my groin. It makes me grumpy. I run protectively of it, messing up my gait and inflicting new stresses on other unsuspecting parts of my body. I in turn inflict the worst of my grumpiness on a poor unsuspecting Sarah, doing her best to pull me along to the finish. I’m pleased with my time, but for once I didn’t love the process.
Afterwards… well, 145 miles is not kind on your body at the best of times. And it seems that it wasn’t the magical cure for a dodgy groin after all. Sitting up unaided is hard. Sneezing nearly cuts me in half unless I curl myself into a little ball first. And the pain seems to have migrated down into my left leg now too. A few abortive attempts at getting back to running. Not happening.
Peaks and troughs. Good days, bad days, days not thinking about it and days of utter, wall crawling frustration. Second, third opinions, little consensus. Kettlebells are my new best friend, and I’m enjoying balancing out my body a little - I’m finally developing a small semblance of upper body strength to compliment the strength of my overworked legs. Silver linings.
And then the bike. From abject ambivalence of anything bike-related, to begrudging enjoyment, to something more, much more. It’s not running… but I’m slowly coming to understand that it’s not supposed to be. Miles of beautiful English countryside, miles I’d never have seen otherwise, different miles to those I’d cover on my own two feet. Not better, not worse, just different. A new skill to learn, revelling in being at the start of something, in being 1134th position on a Strava segment instead of up there at the top. Humbling. Restorative. A new challenge. Again, balancing out my body, working muscles that have been neglected for years. And a chance to suffer again, in a good way, in a positive way, working the lungs and head and heart nice and hard in a way I’ve not felt for a good few months. It’s not running… but I realise now that it doesn’t need to be.
My race calendar is empty, upcoming races scrubbed out with a heavy heart. This season is over, I know that. But hopefully this will be a time I look back on as a positive one, one in which I learned new things and built a better, stronger body and a wiser mind. Only time will tell.
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This is not intended to be a cautionary tale, except perhaps as one for my own future self. Everyone is on their own journey. To get the very best out of yourself as an athlete you have to skirt the very fine line between peak fitness and injury or illness. You can read as many articles as you like about the dangers of overtraining, the importance of rest and recovery, but you won’t learn about yourself and your own personal limits from a book or a blog. Personal experience, trial and error - these trump everything else as learning tools. Hindsight is the only lens we have that can really help us to see past the generics and get a peek into the specifics of our own body, our own responses to stress and fatigue and training load. The important thing is to find those lines, be aware and accepting when you’ve crossed them, and find ways to avoid making the same mistakes again.
The frustration might leak out once in a while, but I deep down I know that 2016 will see me come back with a wiser, more experienced head on my shoulders and a body that’s ready to do battle with the trails and roads and tracks once again. I can’t wait.