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Lacticaholics Anonymous
by Andy Render - 21:09 on 30 September 2014
Lacticaholics Anonymous
Regular readers will be aware that 2014 hasn't been particularly enjoyable for me due to a particularly persistent and niggly achilles problem. This has hampered my ability to run and I have lost a lot of fitness that I worked really hard to get.
I guess injury affects people in different ways and being unable to run and join in with the friends and clubmates is a big thing I have missed, but if I'm really honest the biggest thing I've missed is the running itself.
It was the same when I gave up playing rugby. People would ask me if I was missing it, and I always replied that I didn't miss the travelling, the training, the Sunday morning stiffness or to large degree the 'craic' with the other players. What I missed though was the pre-match nerves and the 80 minutes of adrenaline and the challenge of maintaining the performance as the game wears on and fatigue kicks in - relying on your training to see you through and fight through the lactic acid bulding up in your body.
Being injured and not being able to train hard has meant that I've not been able to run to the best of my abilities and has been enormously frustrating - for most of the year all I've managed has been the odd steady run or a one-off race where I have found myself losing to lactic and fatigue in the second half of the race.
However over the last 2-3 weeks there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. I have managed some proper runs - runs that I have set out to do with a purpose (long, tempo, recovery, reps) and I have achieved them. Tonight I set a hill rep session up, 3 sets of 5 runs. We all know that the 14th run of this session is the hardest of all - but tonight the adrenaline was flowing and I knew that I had that lactic beat!
Some of you might think I'm mad - we all run for different reasons - but for me feeling the rush on the 14th run and knowing that the session would be completed as intended was huge. That is why I still get strange looks from dog walkers as I run up and down a hill on a back road outside Annan.
My name is Andy, and I am an Lacticaholic.
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