Every day I get up and cycle to work. I work all day, then I go to the gym and sit on an exercise bike for between 90 and 120 minutes and push at a minimum of 20mph and a maximum of about 22mph. I get my HR up to between 140 and 155 during that time depending on how hot it is in the gym that day. Then I get on my bike and cycle home. Every day. At the weekend I get up and go the gym, then I cycle for between 90 and 120 minutes and then cycle home again. The only real difference between me and a cyclist is that through necessity I do all of this with a cast on my leg. It is fair to say the attention I've drawn falls mostly into the 'are you kidding me do you not want to get better you have a broken leg' category. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't trust in the person telling me that this is what I should and can be doing.
Very recently I decided that I had taken my own running career as far as I could on my own. I had a pretty good run of things. I managed to navigate my way through some hard races without too many major difficulties. I broke 3 hours for a marathon and actually won a couple of awards in desert races for finishing in the top 5 plus a bona fide hard trail ultra win with a field of 200 people so I guess I reached a pretty good standard. By no means spectacular but still I was pretty pleased.
Ever since Badwater it has felt like the wheels have come off. I was a wreck of a human being for 2 months afterwards. I started UTMB and got pulled early in the race along with all of the other runners which in hindsight was a blessing in disguise because I was ill and struggling after just 4 or 5 hours. I had a shocking race at CC100 and finished on nothing but sheer stubbornness. Then I had a break, a couple of small ultras and ramped up my training again for RR100. The whole of the last 3 months I have been teetering on the brink of disaster and so far this year I've suffered two, DNFing at Rocky Raccoon and then picking up this stress fracture. What it showed me was that I'd taken it as far as I could on my own. If I wanted to carry on finishing really hard races I could probably do it without help. But I feel like there is at least some potential to do better than that. I don't think I'll ever run a 2:40 marathon or a sub16 hour 100 mile race or be anywhere near competitive at the bigger ultras but I would like to at least do myself justice and do as well as I can. In the end I will go back to just running things to finish them and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's all I've pretty much ever done and I love that about our sport. However whilst I have another couple of years to push myself as hard as i can I am going to give it a crack.
So that led me to contacting my new coach Lisa Smith-Batchen. I'm not going to write any more about Lisa now than to say I'm three weeks in under her wing, I've spent two of that three weeks injured and yet she's already changed the way I view everything about training and what I want out of racing. I set myself some pretty ambitious goals to give to Lisa and she feels I can achieve them. It will take time for me to get to some of them because of having to sit it out for 6 - 8 weeks with this fracture but I have total confidence that once I'm back in the game, I will be back better than ever. It is Lisa who picked out that I had a stress fracture by just talking to me from the other side of the atlantic when my physio couldn't even do it with me on the table. Lisa told me in no uncertain terms to get a scan immediately, which threw up the fracture and has subsequently given me what I need to keep my mind in the game, stay reasonably fit and get healthy again without rushing and causing longer term problems. I put my total faith and trust in her. If Lisa says cycle, I cycle. If people in the gym look at me like I have a mental issue that's fine. I'll just keep getting on that bike and visualising the first big climb out of Squaw Valley at the start of Western States.
That goal became all the more real today when my application for the Grand Slam went through and my name joined the short list of others going for all 4 100 milers this summer. A lay off from running was the last thing I needed right now but it has only fed my hunger to succeed in completing something not many other people have done or get the chance to do.
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