Since coming back from the TPR I have been struggling a bit with niggling injuries. My left calf is fine for some things- I can bash round a 30k orienteering course, and yet, it will stop me from going 5k round the block. I still have yet to get to the bottom of this.
Equally, my knees are giving me no end of grief. Clicking and painful, and then not painful- and then worse. Today is a bad day and there seems to be no reason why the right knee is so sore. Just sitting down and standing up is hard work. The main things that are at the top of my mind are "Don't place the blame on cycling a long way" and "Don't blame your age". Both of these are lazy excuses that hold very little water.
The most frustrating thing is that I'm normally quite used to just thinking "oh, I'll go out for a quick run" and there is nothing stopping me, except motivation. There is not really anything that hurts any more than fatigue. And yet now, these things actually hurt- and make me pause before doing anything. Movement is good- exercise is excellent, and yet to do so through pain is not necessarily a good idea- NOT, I must hasten to add, at this stage because it is "causing more damage"- but more because by doing more will probably further sensitise already unhappy tissues and muscles and make doing the things I want to do be more painful.
So what exactly is going on?
Trying to think about it logically, the last year has been very much about cycling, and not so much about running. My aerobic capacity has stayed pretty high, but the connective tissues through my legs, though used to creating power, have not kept their strength or capacity for running. They are very physiolocgial actions (especially when you consider fell running vs cycling), even though from a superficial and energy process view point- they are much the same. (ie. aerobic, with a bit of anerobic thrown in).
What appears to be happening is that my brain and my lungs are quite happy to believe that I'm still in excellent running shape. Which is all well and good, until I start trying to do the things that historically, my tissues would have been fine with. Warm ups, incidental strength work during the day, practicing plyometrics etc- which would all have been a small part of my training actually have a much more significant impact on my muscles, tendons, ligaments and general connective tissue than they would have had a few years ago.
This is not because of aging. That, as previously mentioned is a pretty rubbish excuse. It is because I have got out of the habit of doing these things. Stuff that should be easy is having an impact to the point that my muscles are getting fatigue and Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) and it hurts to move. It's really hard to reconcile this... previously, doing a heavy session in the gym, or hard hill reps would make me very sore over the next few days- and ho ho ho- isn't this amusing. The soreness would go away and I'd carry on.
What is new is that the exercises are low level, but are STILL causing muscle aches and DOMS and I'm left there thinking "what injury can I possibly have done?". The answer is, of course, no injury... but muscle aches which means you are repairing and getting stronger- just be patient. You don't currently have the same training resilience as you had a couple of years ago, but that will come. Boom/bust is not where we want to be- so patience, slow increases in strength. If something hurts, work on another system or section of the body.
Yes, aging means it takes longer to recover from training etc. yes, that is a factor, but no- it is NOT an excuse.
