Three more weeks. That’s what I keep telling myself. The right foot is coming along, and the knee is nearly fully healed, so I’m treating this injury rehabilitation as my first “finish line” of the season. The first part of my year. And I’m giving myself until the beginning of March to get there. It’s a good marker to transition back to training. It’ll have been 10 weeks since breaking the foot, which is actually a cautious return schedule. Clearly, broken bones heal at different rates, some faster, some slower. Being that I’m young, healthy, etc., it’s fair to say that I’m on the faster end of that scale. And the “average” person is fully healed in 6-8 weeks. So 10 weeks is reasonable. Considering where I’m at now (walking, not quite full range of motion, feels like a bruise), March 1st should be good.
Similarly, the knee is finally at the end. It’s still noticeable, which might be what I’m just going to have to get used to considering that I’ve had 1/3 of that tendon removed (2002). It’ll likely never have the same elasticity that my other knee has. I’m still doing my rehab exercises for it, twice a day, and they’re much, much improved from 4 months ago. Again, “average” recovery time for patella tendinitis is 4-6 months, and by the beginning of March I should be right in that window.
Both of which are why I haven’t been blogging as much about training. I do a lot of stationary biking, and there really isn’t much to say about that. It’s not horrible, but it’s certainly not exciting. But it has given me a lot of time to think about what I want from this coming season and beyond: I want to focus solely on quality. In this past I’ve been really interested in quantity, in lots of races and lots of miles. This time I’m changing direction towards one race ~ a road marathon at the end of the calendar year. Although I can’t be specific yet about what race I’ll choose, I do know that’s what I want. And I want to drop my personal best in the event by 8+ minutes, to under 2 hours, 30 minutes. In turn, I also want to drop my personal bests in the half marathon (to 1:10) and the 10k (to 31 minutes).
So I’ll be a road racer this year. A healthy one. So, my personal racing goals for the year:
1. Stay healthy
2. Run a marathon under 2:30
3. Run a half under 1:10
4. Run a 10k under 31 minutes
Best guess as to how the year turns out…I start training in March, increasing mileage until April. In May and June I train for a late June 10k. Then, starting in July, I train in earnests for a late October half marathon and a full in early December. This schedule gives me plenty of time to build gradually, something I’ve never really allowed myself to do.
Until next week, All my best & Keep moving forward, Matt
From SFC Olson(RET), Dude you rock! I am so inspired by your writings that after 8 years I have started running again! Shooting for the OKC Memorial 5k in May and hopefully something longer later in the year.