Hamstring Treatment Day 62: 6 Miles on the Treadmill

The marathon training plan put out by John Ferguson, the legend, called for 6 easy miles today. The weather wasn't particularly hospitable and running coach Brian was away today, so I just pumped these miles out on the treadmill. Because I've calculated the actual distance factor compared to what the treadmill reports (1.131 miles actually travelled for every mile reported), I had to do 5.3 miles "reported" to get 6 miles actual. I knocked it off in 55 minutes, which isn't terrible for an "easy" run.

Hamstring Treatment Day 61: First Speed Work Session at Thompson Arena - 5 miles

Eventually, once I figure I'm back up to 100% of my pre-hamstring injury speed, I'll stop prefixing these posts with "Hamstring Treatment".

Tonight was the first speed work session at the indoor 200 m. track at Thompson Arena in London. We did 7 repeats of 400 m. (with a 200 m. jog break) followed by 2 repeats of 200 m. each. Add 2 miles total for warm up and cool down, and we ran a total of about 5 miles.

Again, I learned that I simply don't have the speed I had in early November. My typical 400 paces were at 1:50. Here were my splits for the 400 m. "speed" laps:
2:00
1:50
1:48
1:50
1:49
1:51
1:50
0:52 (200 m.)
0:53 (200 m.)

Looking at what I was able to do on June 14, 2011 at our _first_ speed work session in the summer, Johnny had us doing 600 m. repeats and my average time was 2:21. So, if they had just been 400 m. repeats, I should have been in the 1:35 time frame. And looking at my Parloff Relay times of July 15, 2011, I was around 1:30 for 400 m. So I have a long way to go to get the muscle back up the that sort of time (and that was at the _start_ of speed work last summer)!

On the plus side, though, I didn't feel at any time that I was going to re-injure the hamstring.

Hamstring Treatment Day 59: 13.4 miles in London

Its a new week, so a new round of punishment! We did a route in London that took us through city streets and then up Adelaide Street to Sunningdale, and back down Richmond to the the University and back downtown again. That was 11.9 miles, and then I added another 1.5 miles after that -- 13.4 miles total. There were _lots_ of hills up to and on Sunningdale road, so it was a good precursor to Boston.

Here are my kilometre splits:
5:50
5:32
5:43
5:40
5:32
5:32
5:39
5:36
5:48
5:23
5:49
5:26
5:41
5:40
5:49
6:00
5:49
6:14
5:59
6:19
6:16


The good news is, though, that my hamstring felt much stronger than a week ago. It actually felt like it was contributing on the uphill segments of the run.

My average pace was 5:47 per kilometre -- 9:18 per mile -- which was about the same as last week. But this was a longer and definitely hillier run, so definite progress.

Hamstring Treatment Day 58: 30 miles this week, 1 mile on the treadmill today...

I tried to get a mile or two at "marathon pace" -- which to get a 3:20 marathon would be 7:38 per mile. I couldn't even come close. There is no doubt that the muscle is going to require a lot of work to build up my speed again. I managed to get a mile in at about a 10 minutes/mile pace -- pretty pathetic, really.

Hamstring Recovery: 8 weeks as of today! 7 miles on the treadmill.

... and I'm really starting to feel that its not going to be an issue much longer. I did 7 miles on the treadmill tonight -- 4 at a 5.5 MPH speed, and then ramped it up to 6 MPH for the last 3 miles. And for the last quarter mile or so I had it up to 6.5. Total time on the dreadmill was just a few seconds over 74 minutes.

So I'm feeling stronger every day. And today I also ran through the valley from our home to the office (just a few hundred metres, mind you), but by the top of the hill on the other side, I was still feeling pretty good.

So that makes 29 miles this week.

Hamstring Recovery - Day 55 - 5 Miles from Clandeboye...

Here are my kilometre splits:

6:14
5:44
5:34
5:39
6:03
6:20
6:19
6:07

The average pace was right on 6 minutes per kilometre. The challenge was the wind -- definitely heading right into our face when we turned around after doing 4 km. But we finished it and, despite the slow plodding pace, the beer still tasted good at the end!

Hamstring Treatment Day 54: 5 miles in London...

Tonight was the first night of "speed work" for the marathon training clinic. While we didn't do speed work, per se, we did all go out for anywhere from a 4 to 5 mile run. Here are my kilometre splits:
5:19
4:59
5:21
5:07
5:23
5:22
5:19
5:35
5:21 (220 m.)

The average pace for the 8.2 kilometres was 5:18, or 8:32 per mile. I could feel my hamstring -- and I was still having more trouble on the uphill sections than the flat and downhill sections, but I felt stronger than any run previously since the injury, so it was a good day.

After the run, I went out and played hockey and the hamstring was fine.