Back in the saddle again.

Ahhh, busy week. Kids off school. Work going bananas.

Today, I ran again for the first time for two weeks. And after 3 minutes, I could feel my calf tightening again. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As alluded to in previous posts, last Sunday I cleared that space in my study and got the bike out of the shed and put it in the cleared spot. This lets it glower at me to remind me to use it, and makes it less noisy and quicker to leave the house at 6:45.

I had planned to go out on Monday morning, but a late night on Sunday put paid to that - I needed the extra 45 minutes in bed. On Tuesday morning though, I hit the streets on my 8 year old generic mountain bike, bought in a French HyperMarket as it was cheaper than hiring a bike for 2 weeks. So it's not state of the art by any means, nor is it the most efficient of devices. But that doesn't matter. I'm using it for exercise, not racing.

I set myself a mildly hilly 6 mile circuit to cover in 30 minutes, straped Mr Garmin to the handle bars and headed through the first mile and a half of downhill warm up. The last time I'd rode this sort of distance was chasing my kids around CenterParcs in Cumberland, and that was over a longer amount of time.

With the downhill section out of the way, it's a mile and a half of uphill to the mid point, and this wasn't easy. Already the saddle was feeling a lot sharper than it had any right to be and all sorts of different leg muscles were wondering what the hell was going on.

Still having turned through the half way there was a flat mile before another mile of uphill around the ridge overlooking my part of town. I'd lost a fair amount of sensation in most of my lower body by this point and the next 3/4 mile were mercifully downhill, but took me over a main road which had burst into life and took some time to get across. Finally, the last quarter mile back up the road to my house were fine and I arrived with 5.79 miles under my belt in 29:21, a 5:04 pace. I was left reflecting that there are people who run longer distances faster than I can cycle them!

Thursday was a repeat performance, with a minor modification to increase the distance to over 6 miles. This was 6.05 miles in 29:56 with a 4:57 minute mile overall pace.

So, distances achieved OK. No injuries. But I did find cycling much less involving than running - perhaps its the temptation to freewheel the easy bits.

So, this morning, having had two weeks to recover, it was time to strap on the running shoes and hit the pavements again. This time, no stretching. I walked to the end of the road - just under 5 minutes - and then started on my regular circuit. Not the one I was trying out when things went wrong last time. And yes, after 3 minutes I felt the calf straining and was close to giving up rather than risk another 2 weeks.

But, I decided to just keep it slow, keep to 8 minute:1 minute run walk intervals and see how far I get. And this worked. I got round with a 10:03 pace, running for over 25 minutes of the 28 I was out there.

Although not ripped, I've felt the strain in the calf all day, So I expect I will not run again until Monday or Tuesday next week, and possibly get the bike out once in the meantime.

Hopefully, I'll manage to keep the balance between improvement and injury by doing this.

All the best.

Mr Stumble