You see what you look for
It has been a funny few weeks, getting back into training and trying to get my head round the rehab process.
Last time I wrote, I was not running at all and I said that it was starting to mess with my identity. That has shifted. Part of what shifted it was simply stepping back and putting my trust in Fletch and the process, which is easy to write down and considerably harder to actually do.
The other part was the gym.
The thing I always skip became the thing I do
I committed to myself that the strength and conditioning programme would be the focus. Not the thing I fit around running. The focus.
Four times a week, and it has done two things. I feel stronger, which is nice. But more importantly it has baked the biomechanics work, the stability work and my back exercises into the programme properly. These are the classic ones that always slip. Everybody knows they should be doing them. Knowing something is logically the right thing to do and actually committing to it for the long term are two completely different things, and I have spent years on the wrong side of that gap.
It has left me pondering something. The limiting factor on my performance is, quite frankly, not my aerobic engine. It is the rest of me. The job now is finding ways to bring myself together for better performances, rather than just building a bigger engine and hoping the chassis holds.
Building back from five minutes
Alongside the gym, the running has been rebuilt from almost nothing.
Five minutes. 1.25km. 1.5km. Seemingly infinitesimally small increments. Then some intervals at a reasonable pace, but only two minutes at a time with 30 seconds off.
They built up, and yesterday I ran 10km. Seven times five minutes on, 30 seconds off, averaging around 4:20 pace. Reasonably hard efforts. Not flat out, but pretty hard. In the grand scheme of things 10km is not far at all, and I was delighted with it.
You see what you look for
Here is the thing I have been thinking about more.
I am doing all these extra exercises now, and that makes my body feel different. Before, I would run a lot and do some gym work, but not a load, and certainly not much in my legs. Now I am doing far more of that. A bit of stiffness here, a bit of stiffness there.
Which means I am also, and I need to be careful with this, possibly over-analysing. How are my knees feeling. How is everything feeling. Is that good, bad or indifferent. I notice when I run that I can change my form very slightly and something changes with it.
The more you look, the more you find.
So every sensation goes through the same set of questions:
Is it really hurting, or is it just a sensation?
Does it come and go?
How is it later in the day?
Does it hurt two hours later?
Does it not hurt at all?
I have noticed something in my left knee. Then my right knee. Then it has changed again. A lot is going on, and most of it needs to quieten down, be noted, and then reframed.
I am also having to accept that the leg press is a very different thing to a lot of running, and my body is going to tell me so.
And underneath all of it sits a question I do not have a clean answer to. How do you balance a cautious approach with a let's get it done approach? It is somewhere between the two. That is not much of an answer, I know. It is the honest one.
What I do think is that this is making me more dialled in. More aware of what I am feeling, more able to tell a signal from noise. That is what the last three or four weeks have really been about, and I have enjoyed the process more than I expected to.
Thirty minutes where nobody can reach me
I have been finishing every gym session with a 30-minute sauna.
The heat is doing something, I am sure. But the honest benefit is that you cannot take your phone in there. Thirty minutes of quiet. Thinking time, reflection, no distractions. It has been really, really positive, and I suspect that has very little to do with the temperature.
A new peak, not the old one
Looking back on the last three weeks I feel solid. I have actually done a decent number of hours when you add up the gym, the running and a bit of time on the bike. It is a waiting-ish sort of period, but it is progress.
Behind all of it is something I am still trying to properly embrace. After building for years towards one enormous challenge, it is okay to take a bit of time out. It is okay to come back slowly.
Where I want to be is on the podium at Nove Colli. That does not mean I need to be setting a personal best on the lanes around my house this week.
It is a long game. I am building to a new peak, not trying to carry on from the last one.
Very different mindset. Very different approach.