Five months to go

Things have been looking up. Have continued to battle frequent injuries but am finding ways to get around them. Have reduced my mileage a lot. I used to always run five days a week, but over the past two months I've only been running 2-3 times a week (max. 23 miles per week), yet I've continued to improve in speed and long run mileage. It seems like two days resting may be just as beneficial as two days training. The reason for the sharp weekly mileage reduction has been weird things going on with my left knee. Hardly any pain but "crunchiness", popping noises. My mileage reduction was an effort to avoid making it become something worse. The condition seems to be improving gradually. But the positive by-product of this pseudo-injury has been my discovery that by running less often, I may be able to avoid injury without sacrificing gains in performance.

It's also helped that I've found some nice minimalist trail shoes, the pictured New Balance MT101's. I bought them in Virginia this summer and have been really, really happy with them. Truly minimalist, light and flexible, but the plates in their soles make rock bruises unlikely when running on trails. On asphalt I've been continuing to use the great Mizuno Wave Universe 3's.

Current performance level indicators: last Sunday, 5 miles at 6:30/mile; this Sunday (today), 13 miles at 7:06/mile. With five months to go until the London Marathon, I'm still aiming for < 3 hours.

Progress

Haven't posted here in about nine months so here's an update. I finally started running again last January, about six months ago. Have progressed slowly since then, slowed down by some minor injuries. Did not feel ready for the London marathon last April so deferred until April 2012. Am currently running about 20 miles/week at about 7:20-7:30 pace. Looking forward to improving on that, would still like to run sub-3:00 in the 2012 London marathon.

The biggest obstacle is my injury-proneness. My plan is to wear minimalist footwear and to manage minor niggles by shifting from higher-heel (e.g. Nike Free 5.0) to lower-heel (e.g. Mizuno Wave Universe 3) shoes to manage Achilles pain, and switch vice-versa to manage forefoot pain. These are the two areas that have troubled me the most. The high-heeled shoes encourage heel landing, and the low-heeled shoes encourage mid/forefoot landing, so switching around seem like a good strategy. Also, I'll avoid the really minimalist shoes (like the Mizuno) on the tough gravelly trails I often run on. A think a couple of injuries have been due to repeated, pummeling pressure from sharp rocks on thin soles.

I remain committed to minimalist running shoes. Overtraining will lead to injury with any kind of shoe, but I think my injury rate is lower with minimalist than with standard footwear.