Year In Review 2021 – When everything is uncertain, everything that is important becomes clear

My number one running goal this year was to stay injury free. After two years of continuous injury and uncertainty over whether I could ever be injury free, my number one goal for 2021 was to stay injury free and be healthy. My other goals in the first half of the year were to win the Australian Alpine Ascent 25km race (AAA) and achieve my performance goals at my other A races – Buffalo Stampede, UTA22 and BTU30.

In the second half of the year I would switch focus to Obstacle Course Racing (OCR). Due to lockdown I did not get the chance to do this, although I did get to race in November and December 2021 after lockdown ended. I managed to win the AAA and achieve my performance goals for Buffalo Stampede (top 3 finish), UTA (top 10 finish), and BTU30 (top 3 finish) (race recaps are all on website). Despite lockdown swallowing up months of the year, I still managed to race 13 times. The real story is not the race results but what I learned along the way about staying healthy.

In 2019 and 2020 I had patella femoral knee pain (6 months), achilles tendonitis (6 months), plantar fasciitis (left foot 7 months), and plantar fasciitis (right foot 4 months). I trained through all of these injuries and continued racing though was barely healthy enough to do so. If I wasn’t allowed to run due to medical advice I would replace running with hard cross training.

Looking back, I was getting injured not because of my training load but because I was not recovering. I was not recovering because my body was not healthy. I was not healthy because I had been holding a high training load with minimal periodisation and no off season for years and years. If you are injured you actually need some complete rest so your body can heal. Sure, cross training is great, but if you do hard swimming, riding or rowing cross training every day, you can’t expect your body to heal.

What did I change in 2021? I got help from a great sports physiologist, made sure I was fuelling training appropriately, parted ways with my coach of 2.5 years, introduced rest days, and had a six week off season to rebuild.

From February I started working with a sports physiologist who assessed my movement patterns and programmed exercises to address my weaknesses. This was the turning point in improving my health. Two to three times every week I have done the programmed exercises. At the start of the year I could barely hop (that’s how injured I was) and now I can do a full single leg plyometric program multiple times a week. For me, the programming has been a lot of single leg squat and bulgarian split squat variations (ie with contralateral press, or diagonal draws), calf raise variations, running drill exercises, and plyometric progressions. I could barely jump onto an obstacle in 2019 and 2020. I really noticed at Spartan Tooradin a few weeks ago that I am jumping so well now that it is almost an advantage I have over other elite females (well at least making up for my height disparity). This was pretty clear when I got up stairway to sparta first attempt (I had been pretty happy in Port Stephens earlier in the year where I got up in my fourth attempt). I also invested in sports massage or physiotherapist manual therapy or dry needling every four weeks. I think this was particularly important in March to April when I was racing multiple times a month and some back to back weekends. Since I finally had health breakthroughs in September, it is not as necessary because my body is healing itself without the need for as much prompting from massage or dry needles.

In 2021 I learned more about female hormones and sports performance (completing one of Stacy Sims courses) and made some key changes. I ate before every single training session. I ate a carbohydrate source immediately after running. I properly fuelled all long runs. While I became more consistent at this throughout the year, it was not until lockdown in August that I really consistently fuelled properly. The health outcomes were immediate. I felt amazing. My iron levels were acceptable for the first time probably ever. The length of my menstrual cycle decreased to 28 days (from 34) indicating that my hormones were healthier and levels of stress lower. This was despite being in lockdown and having a stressful workload working on COVID-19 related work health and safety matters. I had a few niggles left over from the two years of injuries. These went away. I could cope with more running load and was recovering quickly.

In October I parted ways with my coach and since then have been self coaching with the support of my sports physiologist in Canberra. The first change we made was to take a six week off season to try and recover from the high training load I had been maintaining for almost three years with little periodisation or rest. I was convinced that I needed to do more training to get fitter, but the testing showed my aerobic threshold heart rate was high and I wasn’t going to make much more aerobic progress until I could raise my lactate threshold (my lactate threshold heart rate was only 5 bpm higher than aerobic threshold). During the six weeks I dropped all cross training, did two strength sessions a week and only ran 3-4 times a week. The runs were almost all under an hour with 2xZ4 sessions and 1xZ3 session a week to try and increase my lactate threshold and leg speed. When I started running in 2017 I came from a crossfit and gym background. I was fast only over short distances and had to work on my endurance and aerobic capacity. So I increased volume, particularly after started working with a coach in 2019. Although I initially improved with increased volume, this improvement stagnated and more volume did not create faster running. I now need the opposite – to increase my speed and leg turnover. The six week off season and quality running block resulted in me getting healthy and getting fast. When I started pre-season in December, it only took about two long runs to feel comfortable with that duration again, and my aerobic threshold barely changed. Meanwhile my speed had significantly improved and I was able to perform well in both the Super and Sprint at Spartan Tooradin right at the end of offseason.

I had reservations about racing Spartan in December. Mainly because due to off season I had not trained for the race. However, while I had gained weight (one of the goals of the reduced training load, which also enabled me to heal all my niggles and establish healthy hormone levels), I was the healthiest I ever remember being, and wanted to establish that healthy is fast, it doesn’t matter what you look like. As timing would have it, the race was also on day 26 of my menstrual cycle, which is the worst possible day for peak performance because of the reduced blood plasma volume, high heart rate and increased respiratory rate. This is also usually the worst day for looking bloated due to water retention. Anyway, I performed well, came away with some technical things I need to work on to race better in OCR next year, and started pre-season healthy and looking forward to what I can achieve after pre-season.

So did I evolve or repeat? While I did try earlier in the year, it wasn’t until lockdown that I made some real changes during lockdown that I evolved and finally learned:

·        Healthy is fast

·        Running volume is not everything, it can make you slower if you do not do enough Z4 quality to balance it out

·        If you are not healthy you can do all the work you like but your body will not absorb that training or adapt

·        If you are female, fuelling before you run, during and after is crucial for health and adaption (you can only get away with bad fuelling or fasted training for a year or so before your body breaks down for a long, long time)

·        You must periodise training across the year, this includes having quality training blocks without volume, and having an off season so your body can recover and be more resilient for the training blocks to come.

·        Complete rest days are very important to absorb training. While I have rest days scheduled every seven days, every fortnight I have one complete rest day while the other day it is ok to do gentle cross training. The complete rest at least once a fortnight is so crucial for me at least.

Am I convinced this was worth it? That adding more training is not necessary and can be counter productive and maybe even cause you to be continuously injured for two years? Absolutely. I recently went to the Australian Alps around Mt Buller area for a week. I did three days in a row of 3-4hr mountain runs with over 1000m of vertical gain each day. That week I ran over 100km and ran about 4,000m of vert. At the end of the week I had no plantar fascia or achilles issues from the vertical gain. I had no knee issues from the volume. I recovered well and could continue training the next week. This would not have been possible the year before when any one of those runs would have had me limping and unable to walk properly the next day.