On tuesday I did a test on treadmill, to measure my actual physical level. I was supposed to do it in the end of March, but because of my rehabilitation, we decided to do it now instead, to give me some feed-back on "how bad" my physical level is after the injury and break from running.
The test was different than usual, starting at lower speed (13 km/h), and increasing the speed with 0,5 km/h) every 5min (4 min running - 1 min break), and continuing until exhaustion. I was aiming to run at least at 18 and 18,5 km/h and maybe 19 km/h. But I felt quite good and relaxed during the test, and even at 19 km/h, I was still in control of my breath, being around my anaerobic threshold. In the end, I couldn't finish 4 minutes on 20 km/h, but it was still a very surprising and satisfying result. And not far from the best I have done before. I didn't reach my VO2max, because my legs were exhausted after running 70-75 minutes.
After it was discovered that I had a fracture in my rib, my goal with the coming period of rehabilitation was to do everything I could, to minimize the reduction in my physical level. And I'm pretty sure my physical level now, is even higher than it was just before I got injured. How is that possible?
I haven't been running very much for the last 9 weeks (48 hours) and the progression in volume and intensity has been slowly. But I have done a lot of biking and crosstraining (54 hours) and strength-training (24 hours), keeping the training-load high. And it's very nice to see now, that all the hours and sweat on the bike and in the fitness-centre has been worth it.
The rehabilitation has been good, but not without problems. After Danish Spring, we had a 2 week WOC-trainingcamp with the National Team, starting in Denmark, then going to JK in Lake District and ending with 1 week in Scotland. I hit my knee at Danish Spring, and besides I got quite exhausted after some days with training in Denmark. Even though it was a tough decision to make, I had to skip the JK-races, to make sure that both my knee and body would recover. It turned out to be the right decision, and I had a very good last week of training in Scotland, being able to run full program.
I was tired coming back on sunday, and after the test on tuesday, my calfs has been very sore. I still have to make precautions in my training, and my legs have to get used to running fast on hard surface again. But it's nice to know that my general fitness is good, then it's easier to be patient in my training, and take the right decisions.
And what about the broken rib? It's not 100% healed, but I haven't felt any pain for 4 weeks now...
