Getting back on track

January and running have never really gone together for me. January 2015 was in Guangzhou and after a period of running along the Pearl River in the December cool, January got hot too quickly and I only ran once; January 2016 we'd just got back from China and I had tendonitis ever since a gym incident and it took me till May to get running again; January 2017 got off to a good start but perhaps too ambitious: by the 21st I went around a corner and gave myself a calf tear that put me out of running action for two months; January 2018 was impacted by an aggravated knee; and January 2019 I was coming back from both a fall and surgery in December. The fengshui is all wrong in January, it seems and is always a month of recovery. 

That being said, even with a gentle increase in mileage since the surgery, this January has been the most successful January of the lot - with more running than the previous four years combined, 178km in all. Even though that isn't much compared to an average month last year, I'm still more than satisfied that I've gotten off to a start. 

February will be a month of really getting back into it. In just eight days, I'll be running in the Coatesville Half, which will be more of a training run for me than an actual race. I've only run this course once which was last year, but in March briefly after returning from China. I had barely trained and recorded my worse half marathon time 1:54. Fortunately even though I'm undercooked I'll definitely be able to do better than that this time, and much earlier in the year. This morning in preparation I ran the same distance over a similarly difficult hilly course and got 1:48 so I'm feeling like I'm strong enough to get 1:45. While that is nothing glorious compared to past events (in fact it'd be my third slowest time), I'm pretty happy with the revival of my running.

The subtext to all this is that my recovery from surgery is mostly complete. Less than two weeks ago I finally got to see the surgeon as a standard post-surgical check. To be honest I was still filled with doubts, which I expressed. I respect her opinion but it felt that the check was a bit too routine and perfunctory. She was basically saying all the things I was experiencing were within the range of expectation, that things were fine, which of course could be right but after six weeks of recovery and still to be having discomfort and impact on some of my activities. Now of course I find her judgement to have been correct.

The biggest impact on my running right now is that during the recovery period I had the habit of not using my core to move, and relied on locking my spine and using my arms for a lot of everyday actions like getting up out of chairs, beds, etc. And in early January it was clear that I'd developed "a tummy". Of course part of that was probably the festive period's effect on one's weight. But it was also that a lot of the core muscle atrophied too. Core and glute muscles are important for being able to generate speed and I think that is the main trouble I'm experiencing. Once I'm confident enough I'll focus on those areas and I believe I'll be quickly up to pace and ready for a successful year.