(Just Like) Starting Over

I've had plantar fasciitis for just over a year now, and thankfully at the moment it's pretty much manageable, and generally very quiet. I'm hoping it'll be fully gone within perhaps just a few more weeks, but regardless, anything I do at the moment has to be a bit more careful than I'd like. Aside from not wanting to stress the injury, I'm trying not to stress my mindset too.
This is proving difficult, it's far too easy to focus on the fitness I've lost, the weight I've gained, the progress I'd previously made that's now dust... but with the right focus, every little victory is a victory nonetheless.

I ran my first parkrun in 2016, just the other week at Portobello. I knew before I got there that it was likely to be my slowest ever, but I wasn't worried - mainly, I just wanted to see if I could keep moving for 5kms, which is further than I've ran since probably November 2015, 11 months ago. To avoid over-stressing the plantar fasciitis, but also to acknowledge my lack of cardio fitness at the moment, I decided to run/walk, and try to stick to a specific interval. I thought 4 min run, 1 min walk, but after the first set, I settled into 3 mins run, 1 min walk, and kept that going until 32 mins, after which I struggled, and my last 10 mins were sporadic and possibly a wee bit more walking than running. Regardless, I found a 'sprint' finish within me, and finished in 42:14. Yes, my slowest time ever - but also, I should add, my 95th parkrun. I was actually kind of thrilled with how it went - sounds a bit daft, when just last September I ran a 30:09 parkrun PB, but I'd put ZERO pressure on myself for this run, and it was all about keeping moving, which I'd done. Splits for the 3.11 mile run were 13:28 / 13:19 / 13:44 / 1:43 (equiv to 11:42 pace in that last bit though the garmin shows my 'sprint' finish was 11:00 min/mile pace). My previously slowest parkrun time was 42:08, and I remember vividly how miserably I felt that day, and how tearful I'd been in the car afterwards. This one couldn't have been more different - and additionally, it was a great reminder of what make parkrun the perfect place for me while I'm trying to build my running back up again. Portobello is a 3-lap course, so I had more than half the field lap me, and probably half of them telling me things like 'well done', 'keep going', 'doing great', as they passed. The encouragement was ideal, and hardly anyone knew me, they just saw the back-of-the-pack runner plodding around their course with - I hope - an air of steady determination.

My foot was in a fair bit of pain the next morning, but with stretching and easy movement, it eased off quickly. My calves suffered more on the Monday, two days later, through DOMS pain - which is mostly because they're undertrained at the moment, but also suggests I wasn't focussing on my running form as well as I'd hoped, slipping back into old technique, rather than the new stuff I was taught earlier this year. I went out this past weekend for a run, but my head and heart weren't ready for running (due to other things going on in my life at the moment) and I called it a day very quickly. However, a wee bit of "why am I here? what do I want?" discussion with myself made me change plans, and get a short sprint intervals run done instead. Just 7 sets of 30 second sprints (with 90 seconds rest, haha - I've mentioned how bad my cardio fitness is just now, right?) - but I focussed very heavily on my form. Kept my shoulders back, head high, pelvis forward; worked on my alignment, my core, and powered the sprints with my arms, etc... The sprints went much better than I'd expected (around 9 min/mile pace, and faster!), and I felt proud of myself for salvaging a useful (albeit short) training session out of a bad day. PLUS, my glute muscles were sore that evening, demonstrating I'd been working them properly, which is exciting - because my plantar fasciitis stems from weak glutes not activating when I run, and my calves and hamstrings doing all the work, which over time as I increased my running sessions, caused the calf tightness and the resultant PF. So, I'm reminded of how much work I still have to do, but I feel positive about moving forward.

Which is a relief, because yesterday was the biggest reminder to date about quite how much work I have to do. The magazine arrived......... The London Marathon just got a whole lot more real! My plan right now is to try and slowly build my fitness base back up again over these next 3 months, so that once 2017 starts, I can try and start proper 'marathon training'. Admittedly, it's not going to be the sort of training I would have been doing had I not got injured, but I'm going to work hard to ensure that I give just as much attention to my stretching, my flexibility, my core strength, and my cardio fitness. My marathon training is going to be about more than the running - but as far as running goes, I'm slowly getting going again. x