May has proved to be a challenging month due to a forced change to my running routine that has been brought about with the commencement of hockey season. For the second year in a row, I have made the call to play hockey, although this year have moved to playing in a midweek 040s midweek competition rather than hitting the grass on a Saturday afternoon. While I have really been enjoying the standard of games, which is much higher than what I experienced on a weekend, getting back to my roots of playing at Hale where I played all of my competitive hockey over fifteen years ago, and experiencing a lot of success with us currently sitting undefeated, it has had an effect on my body and the amount that I have been able to run on weekdays.
The first game coincided with the first Wednesday of the month, and I felt it not only for the next day but for the remainder of that week with me not being able to run due to soreness through my legs through until the Sunday night. Due to the dates / days of the month, the first run I managed to complete wasn’t until the Monday the 5th of May – I felt like such a slacker! It became evident from my soreness that my regular routine of running all weekdays was probably not going to work (especially for this first month) and that to stay anywhere near on track for the goal I would need to change the routine / distances being completed. If it stayed the same, I would continue to experience the same results which were less than what I wanted or expected.
I made the decision that I would trial a three-day running cycle, Monday – Wednesday and increase my distances on these runs to 16, 14, and 10kms respectively. Thursdays was to become a rest day, and I was hoping that, in time, the body would work its way into a position of being able to run on Fridays, even if this was just a light run as a recovery (I expect this won’t start until June at the earliest).
The positive for the month is that I managed to keep to this new routine, running each Monday – Wednesday of the month for a total of 12 runs. While less than my usual month and it means greater pressure on the remaining months of the year to hit my goal of 2500 km in 2025, I still have confidence that I will manage to get there! Totals for the month have been included in the table below:
| Total runs completed: | 12 |
| Total kms | 139.8km |
| Average pace | 5’50” |
| Total time | 13:3510 |
Hopefully, June will prove to be an improvement and Friday runs will be able to be worked back into the equation. Let’s bring on the month with the least amount of daylight for the year!
