Push on or push off

Legs are absolutely savaged after track at the weekend. Not had calfs like this for many years.

Monday - rest. Really bad shape. Cold bath, Normatecs doing everything I can to shake them out.

Tuesday - no session. No chance. Risked a run and it worked. Steady was fine - ish. Calfs were fine but legs incredibly tired and unresponsive. Taking lots of protein to get some life into them. Actually confident that if they recover I'll be in good shape to push on.

The danger here is I just get sucked into recovery and no progress for too long. This is the real issue with getting old - the commitment is there but what use is that without an able body.

Ran steady, 7.1 miles at 6.43/mm mainly progressive to 6 but faded on the hills coming home. Better than I deserved but I really need these legs to come back to me by Thursday. 

Not got serious strains, just really sore on the verge of becoming an issue. Fingers crossed I can get back to regular training otherwise moving beyond 17 mins flat is a huge ask without some solid foundations.

Still planning Park Run as it stands, tomorrow will be coke club and Thursday all being well some effort.

Wednesday - up and feel slightly better - wow still crazy tight but hopefully coke club later will shake them out. Might nip in the pool and try to flush them out a bit. 

Coke Club - 8 @ 7.55/mm. Very easy but legs are still smashed. Feels like I've done first weights session of the year, just ripped and tight and painful. Can only run easy from here until they're responsive again. At least I can run but it's unlikely I'll get anything productive done.

Just play things by ear for now, it's no bad things just getting easy miles in for a bit I'll have to see how it plays out. Need to buy ibro tomorrow.

Protein before bed and change pillow to see if that helps.

On plus side Run Britain Rankings down to 0.6 after Sunday, lowest since September 2010. 

Thursday & Friday & Saturday - bleugh. Legs are not coming back. Well, they are just incredibly slowly. So unresponsive. Thursday was 6 @ 6.30 pace which felt fine for effort but so laboured on the legs. Friday was another easy 5 with Monkey but again glutes ached and legs unresponsive.

Saturday got up for Parkrun but sacked it off and spent all morning stretching, rolling the legs. This week is purely maintenance and aiming to try to get some life back in the legs before I resume training properly with structure.

May try treadmill later and see how they are on that. Nope carded a zero as just not got the legs back.

Sunday - legs finally starting to come to life. Stretch and roll early doors and feels best they have all week. DOMS have all but subsided, still feel heavy ish but nowhere as near as bad as they have been.

Alphafly 2 arrived yesterday so keen to test them.  Decide to do 10 steady. In my head thinking 7.30 ish to start and move towards 7 flat by the end. Run up the hill to Hardwick and straight back after 5.

Start off nice and comfortable and focus on keeping my form together. 7.01 first mile feeling pretty relaxed. That's the big hill out the way so from here on shoulf pick up as it's just rolling. 6.32 and 6.26 next couple of miles followed by a couple of 6.18s to the turn. Feel good, relaxed but just missing some conditioning so even though it's relaxed it's not going to be easy. Turn and it's a slight head wind coming home. 6.20, 6.28 and 6.34 for the worst parts and then relax a little on the down hill home in 6.23 and 6.09.

10 mile @ 154 bpm in 1:04.47 (6.27/mm). Power bang on 300w.

Nice run, best for a while and felt fairly relaxed. Missing a lot of key training over the last few weeks but only seem to have lost out on general conditioning which is to be expected. A decent few weeks building back now and I should be much fitter.

Hopefully the legs hold out from here on in and I can finally start putting out pbs this season.