Not another race

You can take the duathlon out of a man but you can’t take a man out of a duathlon – proof that paraphrasing doesn’t work.

I’ve got myself committed to yet another race this year. So much for :recovering from running injury; focussing on swim technique; and improving bike power.

On my last little multi-sport escapade I noticed that I lacked brick practice and that resulted in a bit of cramp in new and exciting places. So the current plan involves a very convoluted and complex way of incorporating brick training into most workouts without getting too fatigued overall.

The obvious downside being that every such session reminds you why duathlons are hard 🙂 So run with a bit of bike and, on another day, bike with a bit of run.

The bit on the end can be 10-20% more in time than the session you’ve just done and, most likely, at low intensity.

If you think about how duathlon plans on structured day-on-day, then you might normally expect a hard bike day to follow an easyish run day. Fair enough. So you wouldn’t want to add on a hard bike bit at the end of the run-day otherwise you may well be too fatigued the following day and fail to get the full benefit of the session.

Actually it makes a lot of sense doing that and I have done that successfully in years gone by.

I did  a great one tonight and my legs already ache.

Actual though the ache is from the cumulative effect of ramping up the run-miles which I have neglected due to a persistent Achilles injury which just won’t go away. Today’s coping strategy was to dope myself up with ibruprofen beforehand so I couldn’t feel the pain 🙁 Actually that’s really not a good idea so please don’t do that at home.. It really is NOT what you are meant to do. anyway I stupidly did it hoping that not being able to feel pain would mean that my run-technique would not change as I wince to avoid Achilles pain. So I should run more ‘correctly’ and hence be less likely to injure myself.

Anyway the effects of the ibruprofen have not yet worn off and my Achilles don’t hurt so much (yet). However I suspect that if I wrote this tomorrow I might be lamenting the stupidity of may actions and be looking forwards to 3 months off! We’ll see.

As I say, don’t do this at home folks!

Related articles

• How to do a duathlon (theguardian.com)
• Hyde Park 2013 Tri Roundup (the5krunner.com)
• Orthopedics 101: Understanding Achilles Tendinosis (orthopedics.answers.com)
• How to Treat Acute Achilles Tendonitis Pain (orthopedics.answers.com)
• Hillingdon Sprint Duathlon (theironmaidens.wordpress.com)