Hi Blog Followers – Welcome to my Weekly Blog for Coach Ray Boardman’s Qwik Kiwi Website. At the time of publishing the injury I have had since about April (six months) has finally come right, over-pronation in my left foot which has left me with no option but to walk, and when I did run, the result was…
Well yep, I’m a stubborn git, there is no doubting that, the Physio told me no running, I said “are you crazy, there are a lot of events here that involve that, and you get a free t-shirt for your troubles, so don’t tell me I can’t run, tell me how I can”. The Physio told me he has seen this take a ‘year plus’ to come right in some athletes, so he was impressed to see it come right after six months. So how did we do it, I entered events, but only on the okay of the Physio, the Physio is no Coach but he and his colleague are experts in their field. I was strictly to walk fast, to the point where I was borderline on coming to a jog. Once it came right, or rather close to, I was instructed to take small steps of jogging to running at a time and focus on a Treadmill. I would fast walk at 8 Km/Hr and once warmed up would spend the first 10 minutes of jogging for 1 minute at 9 Km/Hr then fast walk again for 1 minute back at 8 Km/Hr, after 10 minutes I would increase to 2 minutes of jogging and 2 minutes of walking for another 10 minutes, but also add another half km per hour (9.5 Km/Hr) for running, the next 10 mins I would go 3 and 3 minutes and add another half km per hour, and so on by both increasing the time of running / walking every 10 minutes by 1 minute and increasing the speed of the running by half a Km per hour, but with strict Physio instructions to stick with 11 Km/Hr for the rest of the session.
This was working great, then I was allowed by the Physio to venture outside on the roads where the surfaces weren’t the best, and harder than landing on a traedmill conveyor belt. I would run / walk a 10+ km circuit by doing a warm up walk for the first Km, then run 100 metres / walk 100 metres throughout, the next session would be 200 run / 100 walk, building up to 500 run / 100 walk for each different session. After that I cranked it up straight to 1 Km run / 100 walk. Coach Ray has always had me Run 9 Minutes / Walk 1 Minute, as I was historically having Calf Strain Injuries. So the next level was to crank it straight up to this ratio. Of course the Physio wanted me to run with caution “don’t go like a bull at a gate”. No problems, with the only running in the last 6 months being when the Physio wanted to test it, I had lost all my run fitness. Needless to say I am back to where I was prior to the injury, in the Physio’s words: “well done you stubborn git, patience paid off”. Just a matter of time to build my run fitness now, but I am back to my normal running regime.
Man did it do my head in having to only be allowed to fast walk, it was extremely frustrating when I was clocking 1,000 Km’s for one of my challenges.
Stay tuned team as I continue my journey. Regards John Humphries (Aka Humps, Aka UltraHumps)!
UltraHumps will be writing weekly blogs as he continues his journey raising funds for Charitable causes.
Read Humps article from last week here:
All his previous articles are stored here: