The Training Reset Plan

I had this big plan to write on my training reset plan, that didn't got written until now. 

So here I am trying to finish this off, and I think it's a very important one, so I can remember it by.

I had kind of my peak fitness after MWM 2017, where I had my FM PB then (official time 4:41, my personal clock time was 4:35) and I know if I put in the work and the training, things could only improve. How naive and wrong I was.

I took just a slight break after MWM and I knew I wanted to do better for my key race; the SCKLM. So after the short break, I started to change the training a bit (totally based on my gut feeling, with no specific reference to anything). I put in more speedwork and tried to improve my footsrike. I started to focus more on mid to forefoot landing. Within a month of doing this, I noticed little to no improvement. I knew this was off. Running is not supposed to be this way. Running, when you put in the work, can only improve over time. Unless something is off. At that point, I have been running for close to 6 years. And apparently 6 wasn't enough for me to know simply all. 

So things didn't progress and improve up till mid May. That gave me 3 months of no improvement. So I went into Hulu Selangor 2017 with just get it done expectation. I was lucky enough to secure some decent position. I was not up to it at all. Hulu Selangor 2017 was only a week away from SCKLM. And I finished SCKLM 2017 in mere 4:52:31 based on my own timing. Not too shabby for SCKLM standard but it was no improvement compared to the year before. And that was very weird. Usually, with consistent training, you can only improve.

Next up was ramadhan, and I started post ramadhan race with Hulu Langat Marathon. Timing wise, it was about similar to SCKLM. So I thought that was good enough, considering the challenge to run in ramadhan and all, I thought things would only get better. Then came the Ipoh 7 Bridges. Things didn't get that much better as well. Long story short, this went on until end September, where my Vivoactive decided to die on me and I had elaborated well earlier on in this entry Training Rut, Training Reset, Reflections and everything else. I had taken the reset process as earlier planned and took training and recovery more seriously. I thought that was the problem. The plan was to go back to basic, work on my foundation, back to easy and slow runs. As it turns out, it never got better. It remained stagnant for a while, before it got much worse. I was hoping that I would improve my 10k, but it didn't. Every run felt next to terrible. I was pure lucky that I managed to secure first position for UM24 (I did the 6 hours one, story later, if this doesn't get posted that much earlier). Then my finale race the Ultimate Direction in December 2017, where I was in pure luck again for securing the no. 1 position. Story later as well. 

So I though with that decent break post Ultimate Direction race, I would have recovered enough. No races until January's KL New Year Run 2018. So I can easily take exhaustion away from the equation. But things only spiraled way downwards post the start of 2018. I hit an all time low, right before the Twincity Marathon where I was supposed to run it, but had to miss it since my maid would be away. And instead of my husband's, I sacrificed my own race instead. And gosh I was so happy that I managed to skip that one. 

Below here is a snap shot of my performance during that time. Very awful paces. It has been as such since the whole of December. It got to its all time low on the week before the Twincity (the 15.9km run below). I was so devastated, I went through to google again on the possible causes of training ruts on the awful day itself. And that day was the first time that I came across an article that said lack of iron is a possible causes of low performance. The run was such an embarrassment but a turnaround at the same time. I quickly grabbed myself an iron pill on the evening itself and the next morning. The very next day, I had to run a tempo run as suggested by Nike (I subscribed to Nike's training plan, which didn't seem to work at all before that), and it had yielded a very positive outcome almost immediately. I don't know what had happened but I was certainly very surprised that I managed to pull such pace. So my prediction was true. The action taken was right.

It was very surprising how immediate the added iron cells in one's body can do to one's performance. I have always been anemic or low blood or the sorts. It was close to perfect however just a year before. Not sure when did it take the sharp turn and I was quite angry for myself for slacking on something that I had known all my life. I never donated blood in my entire life, even when I've been having this idea ever since I was in Uni, due to this very reason. Nevertheless, it's all in the past now. I don't think the other theories that I was on, before the discovery of my lack of iron, was wrong. It was definitely true and I certainly need to adopt those as well. 

I went for a medical checkup few weeks after and was happy that the doctor acknowledged my theory as well. She even suggested a stronger iron pill, the Iberet folic rather than Sangobion cause my condition was quite severe as well. Alhamdulillah, I kept on improving and there was no sign of stagnance in my training, if I've put in the work.

So my lessons here would be:

1. Know yourself well. Any slight lack in improvement of performance. Any plateu whatsoever, cause it is really the starting point.
2. Always listen to your body. Any aches, any prolonged soreness. Cause at the point of writing here, I have developed a new pain. Story later
3. Never ignore your nutrient intake. Always wary of your health condition. nutrition is really key for everything.

After having recovered, I have tried to adopt some new training concept from the book that I was reading. Few interesting finding was, non traditional intervals of 2km reps, 3km reps, step up interval then step down. And I noticed quite a lot of improvement, considering I was from that low before. And to always learn to adapt the training. My VO2 max was once at an all time low of 40. It was once at 50, but now it has stabilised at 48. Lt's hope for more betterment in the future.