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Stress Fracture Recovery - Week 7 & 8

Date:
By JP

After an awesome weekend away I was keen to reach my goal of running again without walking intervals.  Hopefully by the end of this week that would be a reality.

I kicked off the week with running 800m per 1km for 5km.  I built this up over the next few days until finally knocking over 5km on Saturday.  Now, not sure if heading for the trails was a great idea for my first full 5km run but I was so sick of road it was killing me, so trails it was.

While my foot was a little sore it felt amazing to be on the trails again.  I took it very slow at around a 6:30 pace and watched every step.  The soreness felt like it was my foot complaining about moving again but nothing to do with the fracture.  I was still quite timid but I was confident this was the case.  I finished the 5km feeling great with the last 2km pain free.  Later that day after cooling down my foot still felt great so I'm confident this was a win.  Time to rest until Tuesday.

Tuesday I hit my 400m grass oval for some barefoot laps.  Running in completely bare feet gave me greater confidence my pain was just things getting moving again which was awesome.  I easily finished the 5km feeling even better than last time.

Wednesday morning was another 5km out on the trails and again, felt better than the last.  I got distracted chatting and found my pace up around 5:30 which felt fine but freaked me out so I slowed down to around 6:00 just to be safe.  I'm in with my physio this afternoon so we'll see how that plays out.

Turn out my physio is super happy with everything so I am now clear to pick up the pace and just run comfortably.  She's written me another 10 week program which includes a return to hill repeats and speed work which I'm pretty excited about.  By the end of the 10 weeks I should be up around 35km a week again which is edging closer to my normal range of 60-90 a week.  If all goes well I will be up to my normal range by early 2019.