Hello

I haven't updates any training for quite a while now. There is a pretty simple reason for this. I haven't been doing all the much training. Well that's a lie, I haven't been doing much running. I have managed to fit in an awful lot more stretching and core work as result of this, but I'm pretty old school when it comes to athletics and I seriously don't think all the core work in the world is better than just getting out the door for an hour's run.

When things are going well and your just logging the miles it feels like you haven't got enough time in the day, when you're not running and just cross training, the day feels twice as long, maybe it's just me. I'm not the best person to cross train, I'll admit that. I have become a lot better, but only because I have no choice. If I want to rescue any form I may have had from my last trip to altitude before I go back out on the 13^th of this month, I need to get back running.

So what am I doing. Well for many years I have known that I haven't been paying close enough attention to Core work and stretching. I started out just doing 10-15 minutes of core work followed by 5 minutes of stretching, but I'm now doing upwards of an hour on core and flexibility work.

Guy Van Herp, or MacHerp as he is known has been kindly treating my injury and I feel we are finally getting to the bottom of the injury. I have improved a lot over the past three weeks, hopefully he can get me healthy and back running daily within the next ten days.

I do the occasional aqua jogging session, I should do more but I'm not a fan of it. I don't actually think it works all that well for me, from previous experiences where I used to hammer the aqua sessions and then go back running only to have no fitness, so now I only do it to stop getting bored.

I'm a big fan of cycling, and de tour in particular. I read "Slaying the Badger" in a few days and it motivated me to do a lot more cycling, so I'm sure once I get out to Kenya I'll find the time to do a lot more cross training on the bike aswel.

I have been using an Alter G treadmill in Hamilton Academicals Football Club grounds. CorePhysio is located there and the gym specialised in rehab. I've been to the gym four times now, and each time I've been able to run for close to an hour . I started running on the Alter G at 50% of my current body weight, and instantly it felt weird.

I've experimented with a few different session. The first time I went I just did an easy run never going any faster than 7mph as I hadn't ran in a while I just wanted to see how my calf would react to this. On my second visit to CorePhysio I did an interval session, followed by a progressive run on my third visit. The last time I used the Alter G I just experimented running at a steady pace, but increasing the body weight, so I got it up to 66% with no adverse affect on my calf.

I do love my technology and I'm a bit of a nerd as I love to look over my runs, and check average pace, heart rate and all the other little things that mean nothing. What was very interesting, or at least it was for me was how my heart rate was affected by my body weight. It sounds obvious but how much do we know about how our weight directly affects our heart rate. I would have said that current fitness was what affected heart rate the greatest, but not I'm not so sure.

Running at 3:40/km and at 54% body weight my heart rate never got into triple figures, when I up my body weight to 60% but still running 3:40/km my heart rate went up to 122-125, going up to 64% and my heart rate got to a maximum of 144. What's interesting is that I can lower the pace to 4:10/km and run at different body weights to get a different type of cardio workout.

I'm very much still in the experiment stage, but I'm planning on using the Alter G a few more times before I go back to Kenya. I should have a good idea of how I maximise my time on the Alter G getting a cardio stimulus while not affecting my calf.

Also a huge thanks to all the team at Saucony for agreeing to sponsor me for the year, and all going well the considerable future. Hopefully I will be able to repay them with lots of decent results. It's a huge help, and to have a company like Saucony show their faith in you really means a lot, but even more so it's a huge help financially to have Saucony supply me with the Shoes and kit for the year. Images like the above one will be common place in my blogs this year with the less that subtle marketing, but in my defence those pictures were taken a few weeks ago, before anything was agreed.

Thanks to Paul Chappells from the Daily Record for the photo

Thanks for reading, hopefully by the time I next post a blog, I'll be back to full health