3/11/10

Thursday’s Training – Am: 60 mins Aqua Jogging

Today was all about precaution. I could feel my achilles quite a lot as I walked around so I decided it was no time to play heroes and decided to take the day off running. I contemplated doing absolutely nothing but I find it very hard to do that so I waited around until 11.30am for the NAU swimming pool to be open to the public so I could aqua jog. As I waited to get into the pool I watched a Japanese swim team massage and stretch each other after they had finished the mornings workout. I thought about what I great idea that was wondered if it would work in our team environment. If we all took some basic massage classes and massaged each other after every workout it would a) help us all with recovery and b) save us all a lot of money. Anyway, jumped into the surprisingly warm pool and started aqua jogging. It was taking me about 5 mins for me to do 100m so it actually didn’t seem like a long time in the pool. I have aqua jogged a lot in the past so I don’t use a belt any more and all the studies I have read have stated that you get much more of an aerobic workout without the belt. At around half an hour into the workout I was joined in my lane by 8.10 steeplechaser Jukka Keskisalo from Finland. He was cross training on the elliptical that is on pool side then he came into to do 20 mins of aqua jogging. I would find it incredibly frustrating to travel all the way out the states for an altitude training trip only to be relegated to cross training the whole time. It’s bad enough when I do it for one day! I thought that the hydrostatic pressure would be great for my achilles but as I got out of the pool after an hour (I was going to do 2 hours but visions of running on the Alter G later on in the day came into my head and decided to cut it to just the one hour) and walked to the showers, there was quite an ache coming from my achilles. I got changed, went home, iced and then slept for an hour. I woke up and decided not to run on the treadmill and let my leg rest as I wanted it to feel ok for Saturday’s 15 mile tempo. I filled up the bath with cold water and then shovelled a few heaps of snow from outside into the bath and had a nice cold ice bath. I quickly showered and went to pick Julie up from work where she treated me again with some ionto but doubled the time that the electrical charge was on for. My achilles felt great after that and after icing again when we got back to the house, I made some burgers that my dad had taught me to make (with a few additions of my own) and spent the rest of the might patting my full belly and watching Friends with Julie.