Injury Timeout - Revising My Half Marathon Training Plan
As of last Friday, I had almost completed week 12 of my 20 week half marathon training plan. That week was scheduled to be a recovery week, and Friday was a tempo run.
My heel had been bothering me since Wednesday morning or so - I think as a result of walking pretty fast for about 1/2 mile in not-so-great shoes on Tuesday night. My husband and I were trying to get to the presidential caucus and ended up parking the car quite a bit away from the caucus location and walking because traffic was really backed up and we were afraid we weren’t going to get there otherwise. But that’s another story. The other possible culprit is my running shoes - I had just switched to a new pair about a week before I started having pain.
Anyway, I did some cross-training on Wednesday and an interval workout on Thursday. The interval workout went okay, although I was having a little bit of pain. Friday I was still having some heel pain, but (stupidly) did my scheduled tempo workout anyway. I completed the workout even though the heel pain kept getting worse as I ran. I don’t know what I was thinking. After the run, I knew that I had injured myself. By Saturday morning, I could barely walk.
So, I was forced to take last weekend completely off from running. The one thing I did do last weekend was go to Road Runner Sports to return my shoes. I had bought my shoes from their online storefront, but they also take returns in person and I’m lucky enough to have a store nearby. I can’t say enough about the customer service I received there. The runner that helped me took the return then fitted me for a more appropriate pair of shoes. He thought that the problem I was having might be due to some heel slippage, so he fitted me with a pair of New Balance shoes with a narrower heel.
Now, it’s Wednesday, and I’m back to walking pretty normally, although I’m still having a little bit of heel pain. For the past couple of days, I’ve just been doing cross-training - a swim on Monday and some biking on the stationary bike at the rec center yesterday. Today I’ll either do some more stationary biking or try the elliptical, depending how I feel. I’m hoping to be back to running by Friday or so, but this time I’m not going to push it. I’ll wait until I’m pain-free before I try another run.
The open question that I’m trying to answer now is how I’m going to revise my training plan to take into account this injury timeout. So far I have two ideas:
- Assuming I’m back to running by Monday at the latest, go right into week 14 of my training schedule, reducing the mileage a bit until I’m sure I’m completely healthy, but otherwise pretending like I’m right on track.
- Forget about doing a half-marathon in April, and just concentrate on getting ready for the Colfax Half Marathon on May 18. This means that I could start week 9 of my training schedule again on Monday (probably also with a reduction in mileage until I was sure I was healthy), giving me a little more time to build back up.
Right now, I’m leaning toward option 2, but I’d love some input on this. Fortunately for me, I really haven’t had many running injuries, so I don’t have a lot of experience in this area. Any ideas?
If you’ve ever had to revise your training plans mid-stream because of an injury, I’d love to know what you did and how it worked out for you. Please leave a comment and let me know. And thanks.
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February 13th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
K-
So sorry about the injury! That STINKS, as you know I know.
Curiously, I’ve just started reating Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning, which answers this very question.. he says if you miss up to 10 days, he thinks you can resume training with the same goal intact.
I didn’t know that when I hurt myself and even though I missed a week, I decided to forego my spring marathon. After a little less than a week of not feeling great, my fitness bounced back to where it was just prior to my injury, so it can be done…
Keep in mind, too, that since you had a recovery week scheduled, it wasn’t a straight build week.
In the end, though, I’m not doing a spring marathon for a couple reasons and one of them is because I want to race it at top fitness… missing out on a week means I won’t be at top fitness.
Short answer: I think you can keep your goal. I’d totally understand moving it a month.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Thanks for the support and information, Marcus. I hope I recover as quickly as you seem to have!
I guess I’ll play it by ear for now and see how long it actually takes me to feel close to 100% - maybe if it’s within Pfitzinger’s 10 day window, I’ll still try for that April half.
February 14th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Kristen,
I feel for you. Last year at about this time, I tore my hamstring and that set me back for quite awhile. But it sounds like you are back on track and what you could do is still train for your April half marathon, but maybe treat it like a “training” run for the Colfax half in May. I had planned to run the Ft Collins Marathon last year, but with the torn hammy setting me back, I actually did the “mini-marathon” which was 15 miles, and then switched my marathon to the Steamboat Marathon.
Dave
February 14th, 2008 at 8:19 am
I like that idea, Dave. Pre-injury I was covering the half-marathon distance in some of my long runs, so I’m pretty confident I can cover the distance although with this setback, I might not be quite at my peak by April.
I had it set in my mind that I was going to try to be in peak half marathon shape for April, take a couple of weeks, and use Colfax kind of as a training run while trying to build up to a fall marathon. But your strategy sounds like a good one. I’ll just need to change my mindset a bit.