Platypus' Beginners Guide to Running

Well done chris4652009 and IndigoGorilla - both times looking good. Also congratulations on ticking off the last of your PB goals firstborn.

Inverness half marathon coming up for me next weekend, hoping for a fairly relaxing week at work leading up to it but doubt that'll happen.
 
IndigoGorilla said:
1.29.47 at the Anglesey Half Marathon this morning. Third fastest time at this distance, about 90 seconds or so off a pb but was an undulating course and I've not ran before yesterday for almost three weeks (been cycling and unmotivated). Really pleased with the time considering but the pain I'm in now is a wake up call I need to be increasing my mileage again and actually start running consistently again.
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Fantastic, well done mate
 
FFS, running just causes too many injuries!

My shin splints have started to fade a bit but I've managed to do something to my right big toe. It happened just over a week ago on my long run but I've no idea what the cause was or what it is.

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I've circled where it hurts. It only starts hurting when running but once it's flared up the pain persists when walking about in normal shoes. :mad:

I thought taking 3 whole days off running would make it feel better but this morning I ran to work and it started hurting again.
 
My forerunner has died :(

Anyone know of any good deals on at the moment?
I'm just after gps really anything else is a bonus but I'd like a decent battery life and quick connection to satellites though.

The closer to £100 the better really.
 
King85 said:
My forerunner has died :(

Anyone know of any good deals on at the moment?
I'm just after gps really anything else is a bonus but I'd like a decent battery life and quick connection to satellites though.

The closer to £100 the better really.
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I use a Tomtom multisport watch and it's about £60 from Sweatshop at the moment as there are newer models out but it does everything I need of it. The only real problem is that it can be a bit slow to pick up satellites at some times and lightning quick at others. I've yet to work out if there's any pattern to this at all.

Finished the Inverness half marathon today with a chip time of 1:29:10 so pretty happy with that, managed to beat my previous best for this run by over 4 minutes and that's another of my goals for the year achieved already. I've still got mile, 10km and marathon to aim for though so that should keep me pretty busy - annoyingly the London City Mile has been cancelled for this year so I'll need to find somewhere else to aim for that one.
 
King85 said:
My forerunner has died :(

Anyone know of any good deals on at the moment?
I'm just after gps really anything else is a bonus but I'd like a decent battery life and quick connection to satellites though.

The closer to £100 the better really.
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I#d just get A pre-owned Forerunner or similar (if you were happy with it)...plenty on the FB groups in that price range due to people upgrading to the discounted Fenix 3hr or pre-ordering the Fenix 5
 
Thanks.

Yeah it's the Brighton Marathon. I'm not going to run it if I'm not on form to go sub-3h. I'm not really interested in just finishing it.

I wonder if my toe injury is some sort of stress fracture or something. Oddly, it only becomes a problem when running and not during other activities.
 
Shamrock said:
Thanks.

Yeah it's the Brighton Marathon. I'm not going to run it if I'm not on form to go sub-3h. I'm not really interested in just finishing it.

I wonder if my toe injury is some sort of stress fracture or something. Oddly, it only becomes a problem when running and not during other activities.
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Brighton will be my first Marathon, I've no target time, I just want to complete it feeling satisfied that I ran (as opposed to walk) as much of it as possible.

Good luck with the Toe
 
I ran the Silverstone half yesterday and had a terrible run. Been suffering a cold most of last week but felt ok yesterday. Started off fine on PB pace until 6km then just starting getting slower and slower. After 10miles I was done, Could only just hold 10min miles, I had to stop and walk 3 or 4 times. Got overtaken by 3 people in a boat and a chef carrying a big metal cooking pot. Finished is just under 1:50 15minuets off my PB time.

I got a nice medal and the goodie bag was huge, enjoyable course and very well organised.
 
King85 said:
Thanks I've ordered the one with the hrm for £99.99.

Great work with the half too. What was the course like?
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Hope it works well for you.

Cheers, the course is nowhere near as hilly as you might expect. The watch reckoned 247 feet of elevation which is pretty similar to my local parkrun, quite a lot of wind this year though which made it a bit tougher and it rained between about 15-18km for me but it was actually quite refreshing at that stage. This was my third time running the course so I clearly enjoy it enough to go back, I'd recommend it as a nice one to do although looking at your location it would be a fair trek for you.
 
Shamrock said:
Well, after a week off running completely it seems my toe "injury" isn't any better.

I think I will have to see a running physio but 4 weeks out from the marathon I think it might be game over.:(
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Sorry, that sucks. Could be some kind of microfracture See the physio but you are probably best using this cycle as mostly a training cycle to build for an autumn marathon. It might still be a good idea to do the marathon in 4 weeks as a training run as long as you think you can comfortably finish it without aggravating any injury. There is a lot to learn running a marathon, and especially training. Injuries arise form some combination of poor technique/form, inadequate recovery, running too hard top often, diet, lack of appropriate stretching and strength training, and poor training such as icnreaisng millage too quickly or too much quality, or rigidly following plans and not listening too your body.Most training plans actually suck because they get exponentially harder - weekly volume increases by 50% over 12 weeks, long runs double form 10 to 20 miles, while all the time hard work outs like intervals and lactate threshold runs are added and with increasing intensity. And no where in the plan does it detail the core and leg strength training needed. Moreover, you see this plan and says to Run 20 miles, or do 8 x 800meters and you just go out and do it, because you don't ant to wimp put of a hard workout just because you have tired legs. This is where the difficulty lies, you do get tired legs form Marathon training but sometimes your legs are too tired or there is some additional niggling pain that you have to try and pick up on and determine if you should simply take an extra rest day, or do an easy recovery run. Rigidly following plans that get exponentially harder is the lead cause of injuries., along with running easy runs far to fast .

Just this morning I went out for a 16 mile run but all of a sudden by mile 12 I felt really fatigued in my legs. I debated for 0.5 miles if I was just being mentally weak and I should push through, maybe lack of sleep or something got to me. But I decided that I shouldn't feel quite that fatigued and moreover, with fatigue comes poor form and poor form brings injuries. I slowed down and cut the run short at about 13.5 miles total. Makes minimal difference to training but hopefully helped reduce risks. I do similar things ever week after a LR, sometimes I will take a rest day, sometimes 6 miles extra slow, sometimes 12 miles GA run- all based entirely on how I feel, regardless of what my plan has. Last year I injured myself by ignoring my body and just pushing through a interval workout with very tired legs, took me out of running for a few weeks just because I as stubborn and didn't want to miss any training or chicken out of a hard work out. You have to be very careful with running. Much better to arrive at the start line feeling 95% trained than aim for 100% and get injured. You have to think long term and realize if you build on your 95% for the next cycle then in 6 months you will be way faster than if you had pushed to 100% even if you didn't get injured.
 
neilw said:
I ran the Silverstone half yesterday and had a terrible run. Been suffering a cold most of last week but felt ok yesterday. Started off fine on PB pace until 6km then just starting getting slower and slower. After 10miles I was done, Could only just hold 10min miles, I had to stop and walk 3 or 4 times. Got overtaken by 3 people in a boat and a chef carrying a big metal cooking pot. Finished is just under 1:50 15minuets off my PB time.

I got a nice medal and the goodie bag was huge, enjoyable course and very well organised.
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Shame you had a rough one, sounds like a good event though.
Any pics of the medal??? we like medals :)
 
Perhaps I did train beyond my level for pure running (I've previously trained as hard but split over 3 disciplines) but I was feeling pretty decent and this toe injury literally came out of nowhere.

I ran 5K last night and it didn't go very well at all, the toe pain appeared about halfway and it was debilitating.

My toe now hurts today but I'm determined and I'm going to try another 5K later using my most oldest but most comfy shoes with a fresh insole from the new pair. It's wishful thinking that it would make any significant difference but I have to try.
 
Shamrock said:
Perhaps I did train beyond my level for pure running (I've previously trained as hard but split over 3 disciplines) but I was feeling pretty decent and this toe injury literally came out of nowhere.

I ran 5K last night and it didn't go very well at all, the toe pain appeared about halfway and it was debilitating.

My toe now hurts today but I'm determined and I'm going to try another 5K later using my most oldest but most comfy shoes with a fresh insole from the new pair. It's wishful thinking that it would make any significant difference but I have to try.
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Triathlon training is much safer. Running is very different to cycling and swimming, the latter 2 you can really push yourself to your limits, regularly. And with cycling there is no real technique to learn so you can just go all out on some hard intervals and the as soon as you think you have recovered fo it all again, potentially several times a week. With running you really need to spend years slowly adapting your body and developing stronger bones, stronger ligaments and tendons, and even then you have to be very judicious with the amount of hard workouts you do.

For years I tried to get in to runnign and I would do get really in to and try and go out 5 days a week, each run I would try to go longer while simultaneously going faster. Every time I did this I would get injured within 6-8 weeks and then give up for 1 or 2 years. Micro-fractures in the foot was the most common.


You probably have the CV fitness for a sub 3 marathon right now, but getting your body to withstand the stresses of runnign might take another year or to of training, slowly building up your running volume. Cv fitness develops much faster than stronger bones and tendons.


For what its worth I'm a member of a facebook runnign group and at the moment like 1/3rd of the people are injured! Injuries are common with running sadly. However they can be minimized if one is careful. Knowing when to backoff and take things easy or when to push extra hard takes years to get good at. I'm just beginning to learn. And even when you think you are being careful there are lots of variables. Simply changing your shoes can suddenly cause an injury if you change the drop height or amount of cushioning etc. A friend moved houses and now lives ina hillier area, he totally wasn't used to running up and down hills and so despite being a 2:50 marathon runner with years if experience, 90-100 miles are common, he got injured a few weeks after moving despite not being in a heavy training cycle -liekly due to runnign a lot of downhills his body is just not adapted to run. Even worse for the women, pregnancy and hormones changes etc wreak havoc with bone and tendon strength.
 
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D.P. said:
For what its worth I'm a member of a facebook runnign group and at the moment like 1/3rd of the people are injured! Injuries are common with running sadly. However they can be minimized if one is careful. Knowing when to backoff and take things easy or when to push extra hard takes years to get good at. I'm just beginning to learn.
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I'm probably in the same FB group, and yes you are absolutely right. I started running just over a year ago and have been very careful to build up the distance very slowly.

Still, as you said, there are so many variables and running is very hard on your body...there is no hard and fast answer
 
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