What would Rocky do?
People often laugh when I tell them about my fascination-come-obsession with the Rocky movies. As a kid of the 80s, Rocky fever was rife with Rocky 3 and 4 being heavily influenced by the decade they came from. The Rocky movies never cease to bring a smile to my face with them all having a profound effect on me when in need of some inspiration; Rocky never gave up and why should I? Rocky Balboa, AKA Rocky 6 has a particular scene where Rocky chastises his son for giving up so easily, reaching out to him and the audience with an empassioned speech about life not being about “how hard we hit” but about “how hard we can get hit” and continue what we’re doing.
I’ve been suffering with a number of niggles recently; none serious but enough to stop me running at my prime. The sore knee and irritated quad/thigh coupled with acid reflux and a minor cold have each made me question whether I can achieve my target of a sub 2 hour half marathon. I am so close yet I am still just over 2 minutes away.
A lot of recovery focused conversation with my seasoned runners than I has given me a glimmer of hope. I consider myself to be possibly at my height of fitness right now. This level of fitness has taken the last few months of training to achieve and the general consensus is that steadily built up fitness takes months to accomplish and a takes a similar amount of time to steadily lose, if not longer.
In a bid to make sure I’m fighting fit in time, I have started taking high quality multi vitamins and amino acid supplements to ensure my body is getting what it needs. The amino acids are supposed to speed up the recovery of my muscles and to make my body more efficient at utilising protein that I consume. They are naturally occuring things in the food we eat and pose no risk at all to what I am doing.
I have 4 actual weeks of training left open to me and it becomes an increasingly risky game I’m playing. I can work myself up into a frenzy so I become even fitter at the risk of increasing injury, or I can do increasingly less and less and allow my body to recover but risk losing it all in my finish time. I am concentrating on speed work at the moment with all of my gym sessions now devoted to fartlek on the treadmill. The treadmill is giving my joints a break from all the road running and allows me to accurately push my body in a controlled manner. I have not had a a long road run for the last 2 weeks which worries me slightly. I know I can do the distance and I know I can cover the distance easily because of past accomplishments, but it’s training my body again to know what to expect.
What would Rocky do indeed?
