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.