Quote Originally Posted by mr brightside View Post
My understanding is that there has been a lack of running related chat on the old forum and too much political waffle while i've been out of the game and depressed. So in order to lead from the front i'm going to resurrect this old goat of a thread and see if we can't redress the balance a little. I'm trying to settle into a rotating 2wk pattern which covers my needs and enables plenty of rest.

Wk1- Thurs: 5k speed endurance
Sat: 9m speed endurance
Sun: 50m bike to Craven Arms and back
Tue: Horsforth Harriers social run
Wed: Pilates

Wk2- Thurs: 5k speed endurance
Sat: Parkrun
Sun: AM run in dales, >2000' climb, <11m distance
Tue: Tai Chi
Wed: Pilates

5k speed endurance; an undulating route through woods and over fields with 395'. The idea is to get a fast turnover going and keep it going. This is easy over the fields, but i crest the hills in 02 debt with a lot of lactic buildup. Giving 100% every time is tricky as all my mind wants to do is back off and save itself from the torment. This is where the suffering/central governor training lies.

9m speed endurance; essentially the route of the Round Hill fell race at race speed, the idea being to not slow down at all from end to end. The gradient up to Round Hill is very good at wearing you down gradually, i get into the jelly legs zone and just hold it there all the way up keeping my leg speed high.

50m bike ride; serves as a slow twitch/endurance session, no more.

Horsforth Harriers social run; this is a run out with a slow group around 5-7m, serves to increase the amount of muscle memory associated with a clean gait and gets me up on my toes and bouncing through the calves/plantar fascia tissue chain. I also might meet a woman who will date me.

Pilates; very important for spinal flexibility and proprioception.

Parkrun; leg speed and redlining my aerobic system. This is the best way i know of to learn to suffer very badly and come out of it smiling.

AM run; purely to keep my articular cartilage used to loading. I don't have a competetive advantage on climbs and strength training always leads to issues, so this is quite an easy session, just chewing away at the hills and keeping going. Nothing to be gained from pushing it but problems.

Tai Chi; underrated as a spinal flexibilty system, also the forms and breathing calm the central nervous system.

Other: AM run sometimes switched to 'Full Tour of the Fairy Hills'. A nasty little stinger of a route, 5.5m/1700', always feel the climbs in the calves and the descents are very technical.

Daily stretching.

Not doing: Hill reps; only aggravates weaknesses, no significant benefits for me.
Big climbs; many thousands of feet in one bite just give me kneecap problems.
Fixed systems like m-pace, tinman tempo, LSRs

Main aim is to become a category B specialist, because that's what i'm built for and that's what i'm good at.
That sounds a good plan to me . On the subject of knee problems, I injured my left knee in a crunching fall during the LL100 in 2016 and did my right knee not long after after in another awkward fall, and then injured them both again supporting a BG leg in 2017. I kept running but my knees became a real 'achilles heel' to my running and could be really painful at times, especially on steep and/or rocky descents. I carried on trogging and running for fun in the hills, still doing lots of mileage, but couldn't dare push hard... so I ended up becoming progressively more and more unfit.

Anyway I eventually saw the Settle Harriers go to physio Phil (he was previously the physio for North Ribblesdale rugby club) who, although is always super keen to help, as far as I can tell has just the one potential diagnosis for knee pain in his kit bag which is bursitis. Lots of other local runners I know have had the bursitis remedy from Phil too and I can't imagine we were all suffering from identical problems. As an ex-rugby physio too he was ingrained with the patch up, man up and get back out on the pitch mentality which I liked (although I'm not sure my knees did).

But one really big positive came out of my one session with Phil which was hamstring stretching. Phil told me that if my hamstrings were more flexible my knees would be better and, from mid 2018, I started a daily stretching routine which I still do now. I do lots of other stuff as well nowadays but I do think that the key thing that helped my knees recover was hamstring stretches. When I started I could barely touch my toes, due to the rusted iron bars that my hamstrings had become, and nowadays I can grab my ankles and pull my head all the way down to my knees.

So if you're not already doing it, add hamstring stuff to your routine