Fast & slow

The last 10 to 14 days have been mixed. I've struggled to be enthused to swim after work as every day has felt too long and too stressful. So I arrived at last Sunday under-exercised and felt energetic on my usual run from Whirlow to Oxstones.

I reached Oxstones in a 2nd fastest time and after a very brief pause pushed on along Houndkirk Road. At my turn I was please to have reached it in under 45 minutes - often it's closer to 48minutes. Turning around I noted that the wind still wasn't in my face. Often if I do a good pace along the byway I discover that I've been wind-assisted and then have resistance in the other direction. I kept up the effort back to the car park and achieved a PB of under 1 hour 20 minutes.

Everything wasn't good though as in the afternoon a develop marked pain in my left heel very close to the symptoms described online for achilles tendonosis. To be fair, the issue has been bubbling under for a few weeks. I blame it on running to a meeting I was late for in my Vivobarefoot boots. Luckily on Monday I had a physio appointment. Indeed my putative diagnosis was correct and I was advised off running for a few days at least. It's likely that a fast run on a background of too little training was just too much. I feel it is improving now but not sure I should run tomorrow.

Meanwhile my swimming has got slower and slower. Unlike running, where I can achieve a good outcome after a 'rest', swimming ability seems to ebb away day by day. Today's 'spike set' was incredibly slow and my pace dropped off markedly across a mere 1133m. I was making a distinct effort to take the rest sets genuinely slowly and gently but even when trying to be faster I didn't achieve much pace. At least I did make the effort so perhaps I've been able to halt the swimming decline?