Hamstrung!

I've had a setback in training and my target of running a 3 minute kilometre before the end of the month has gone out of the window.

Saturday morning I went to the athletics track to do some sprints, I did 5 100m sprints without any problem, then while doing my first 200m effort I felt something in my hamstring. It was nothing drastic, no sharp pain, just a little discomfort. Anyway, I eased off it for a couple of days, but then went to play football and found it was still a problem.

I paid a visit to the physio yesterday and she recommended a slow build-up back to the level of training I was doing, so the next 3 weeks or so are lost. I'm to do short slow jogs, starting with 5 minutes yesterday and adding 5 minutes each day provided I'm not having any problems until I get to 30 minutes, then I can start doing some short sprints and work on hills

It's more than a little frustrating, but I'm still able to swim and cycle so I should be able to keep my fitness level up, I may even pay a visit to a gym. I just have to be smart about things and try to avoid doing something stupid that might turn a minor injury complaint into a major one.

Happy Running
Maratonero

Update on 3 minute kilometre goal

It has been a while since I've blogged, I don't have so much to say, I'm still trying to improve my speed, I've made some progress but there is still a fairly long way to go.

I've taken a second off my times for both 200 and 400m while with the help of a steady down-slope I managed to cover 500m in 1:32, five seconds quicker than I'd managed previously. Here is the updated table of my times, a * indicates an improvement on the times in the last blog:

	Desired Pace	Current Times
100m	00:18	00:15
200m	00:36	00:32*
400m	01:12	01:13*
500m	01:30	01:32*dh
800m	02:24	-
1km	03:00	03:20

The target date to achieve my goal was the end of June, which is not too far away now. My 500m best was done after two previous fast 500m efforts with a jog recovery, I think given a walk recovery I probably would have come in under 90 seconds. I'd like to be able to do the 3 minute kilometre on the flat but it seems that's a little beyond me at this stage, but with a slight downhill and coming at it reasonably fresh I might just make it.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks to let you know how I got on.

Happy running

El maratonero