Day 6 - Going nowhere slowly

Well - not quite but it does feel that way sometimes when you're doing most of your training on a stationery bike!

With Hayley over and doing two runs it made sense for me to break up my usual long ride into two sections. In the morning I nailed out a pretty decent 80 minutes on the bike with the effort level relatively low.

The afternoon I went for a short run and then followed that up with my second session on the bike - this time watching the European Team Champs.

The run was an odd one - I felt really good for about the first 9 minutes and then the back/glute definitely tightened up a fair bit and last 4-5 minutes were whilst not painful clearly not totally right - definitely need to avoid pushing it too hard right now but still huge strides from where I was a week ago (basically almost able to hobble without pain whilst on a huge amount of pain-killers). I do suffer the usual runners worry as to whether my extra training is slowing down my recovery.

After I was back there seemed to be no problems and a solid 45 minute bike left me with 2:05 biking for the day and 15 running for 2:20 worth of aerobic exercise. Not a great rule but I generally feel if I'm going over 2 hours even if I lose a bit of fitness I'm still in decent nick. Combined obviously with a lot of stretching, various exercises (mostly calf raises to build up my calf strength and protect achilles) and using "The Grid" for massage which is really getting well into my ITBs which have just been too knotted for me to really get into with "The Stick".

Right - shattered now as had a tough day training (more on that tomorrow) but there'll be another update tomorrow.

Looking ahead - to have a reasonable chance at Amsterdam I need to be running at least 60+ miles a week with 14 weeks to go which is in 3 weeks time. I think it could be doable but I'll be starting a relatively short build-up from an unfit state. It's gonna be tough.

Best,
B