TGC Fitness Thread - 2024

[General Ceel]

April isn't starting off very well. Days of rain. If I were a road runner I'd find a dry window and hit the streets, but I'm an old Trail Dawg and the just keep getting muddier and muddier.

[Danster]

I've been away the last four days. Spent Monday and Tuesday on a one night trip with the family to London and then spent Wednesday and today in Cambridge for work. The hotel had a gym so I did quite a tough workout on Wednesday evening. I haven't run outdoors since Sunday.

[General Ceel]

Finally stopped raining... so it could change to snow! lol. Guess I'll try to for Monday!

[Danster]

Just back from an 8km run. That puts me over 200km for the year. I didn't run in January so I'm behind the curve in that regard, but if I carry on my February onwards rate then I will manage a 1,000km year. Trouble is I will probably need plenty in the bank before November as the cold and wet weather will almost certainly keep me indoors more often than not.

Worryingly, I had to stop a couple of times on my run today with knee pain in my left knee, which I had trouble with several years ago. No idea what it was, but I would run and it would be in pain for several days after. It lasted well over a year, I'd run fine, but it would hurt for 3-4 days afterwards to the point that getting up and down stairs was a mission. I just stopped running for a good 2 or 3 years. Then I started it up again and it was fine. I'm hoping whatever that was hasn't come back. I reckon it could have been because of the treadmill.

[Danster]

I'm on holiday in the Netherlands until Sunday, it's a nice large campsite and I've bought my running shoes. Motivation might be difficult, both on the exercise and diet front.

Will do plenty of swimming and cycling though.

[General Ceel]

Enjoy your vacation!

[General Ceel]

Another rainy day. Did manage to get in a short walk along the river before it began to fall.

[Danster]

Managed a 3.9km holiday run around the campsite. Knee started to feel a bit sore but an improvement on the other day so hopefully that's a sign that it's getting better. Although it could be that it doesn't kick in until longer distances.

[General Ceel]

^general rule of thumbs with running pains is that if you have two of something but only one hurts, its an injury... or an injury in the process of happening. So, unless you fell on it or something, its likely to be caused by something your body is doing, mechanically speaking, when you run.

The obvious thing to do would be to stop running and let it recover. But that's not always helpful, unless you simply ran too much, too soon, because it will probably just happen again when you resume running. So you may want to look into your running form, choice of shoes, and what kind of surface and terrain you're doing most of your running on.

Getting injured always sucked when I was running a lot. But it was also intellectually stimulating to troubleshoot the problem. Good luck!

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Another rain day here. Friday isn't looking any better, but at least its been warm for a few days. On the other hand, the rain is supposed to finally let up on Saturday... but the temp will drop and we'll get some snow showers before the system finally leaves the area.

[Danster]

My shoes have had a lot of use, grip is starting to look worn, so I wonder if they're not absorbing as much impact as they once were.

I ran 6km this morning and there was a little pain but I didn't have to keep stopping and bending it as I did last week.

Followed it up with a gentle 16km bike ride with the family, cycling in the Netherlands is a completely different ball game to back home.