Sofico Marathon Ambassador Program

I have been injured for the last 3 months and mostly unable to run. During the last month I was able to run again but after 2 weeks of training I had pain shooting up not only from the knees but also the ankles, I was not able to run more than 20 minutes. So, with the recommendation of my kinesiotherapist, I completely stopped running, focusing a little on strength training and mostly recovery. The last week before the race was very hard mentally because I was sure that I prepared all this time to not be able to run past the 5 kilometer mark.

I still went to the race hoping that if I was not able to run all the way I would at least walk the end of the track. My race strategy was to run pretty fast to be able to cover the most I could while I had no pain (at least none that would prevent me from running). I joined the 2h20 group at the start because if I ran all the way that’s how fast I expected to finish.

I started having pain under and inside my feet after the first kilometer. It was a muscle we identified as weak in the last month of my training with my kine and we started working on it, but we did not have enough time to completely fix it. I think the pain shot up this soon was because I was mostly standing up for the 2 hours leading to the race, against my will if I may add, there was not a lot of space to sit before the race.

Anyway, this pain was present, but it did not prevent me from running. So, I ran. The first 3k at a medium pace (about 6'30/km) to warm up a little bit. Then pretty fast (about 6'00/km) for the next 11 kilometers, I was feeling very good. Between the 14^th and the 19^th kilometer was the real challenge. I managed to find a running team of 6 runners, and I followed them in autopilot (at about 6'45/km). I don’t remember much of this part of the race to be honest except that my runner's knee was beginning to surface. I just know that without them and the public pushing me I would for sure have stopped. At the 19^th kilometer mark, I woke up and I just could not believe that I made it this far. I ran the 2 last kilometers as fast as I could (about 5'30/km) because I knew that nothing could stop me from finishing this race at this point. That’s how through pain and fatigue I ran 21,1 kilometers in 2h16.

I did not manage to beat the 2h mark I set for myself at the beginning of this program but looking back at the situation I’m not even a little bit disappointed. I don’t regret one step of this incredible journey because it led to that amazing finish. Even if I was not able to finish it, I was at the bottom of a wall and this journey made me realize that I can just start climbing it and I’ll see the end in time.

I want to thank everyone involved in this successful endeavor starting with the Golazo coaching team Aron and Laura without who I would not have even have started running, my kine Loris, I could not have crossed the finish line without him, the Sofico Ambassador program team including Naomi who did an amazing organization job, and the SSF running group, Florence, Diane and Rémy who took the stress of the travel and waiting before the race and turned it into an enjoyable time.

It has been 2 months since I stopped running following the training. I have been working on muscle reinforcement for about a month and a half on my own following exercises given by a sports doctor. These exercises aim to reinforce the glutes and a little bit the rotator muscles. They are simple as they only require elastic bands. For the past month I have been going twice a week to a Kinesitherapist. At first, we worked on elastic bands exercises as well, but we are now using heavy weights more with less repetitions. He put me through a wide range of different exercises to be able to hit every angle of the target muscles. I learned a lot about bodybuilding during the past years and he sometimes goes against what I know but every time I asked him why we were doing things this way he took the time to explain. I am quite happy to follow this reinforcement program as I love working out in the gym and pushing my body to the limits and he does indeed push me hard. As I told him every time I thought he wasn't pushing me hard enough he now listens when I tell him it will be too hard. I undershot once, but we corrected the load before the end of the session. I really enjoy the trust relationship we built together.

I was able to run again for the past week and a half. I began with a 10-minute run increasing by 5-minute increments up to 25 on Sunday 9th. I was feeling absolutely no pain until my Tuesday 11th run where the pain shot up again at the 15-minute mark. I am writing this on the 13th and will update and add more later, but this is a big moral setback. My Kine suggestion was not to run until Sunday 16th. I am going on a ski vacation next week and I hope I will not be subjected to the same pain.

On the 16th I went for a 30-minute run. During the last month I have been experimenting with different running techniques recommended by the sports doctor I went to. At the 8-minute mark I felt the pain coming up and this is when I remembered his last technique advice “lifting up the knees more”. I did so and as long as I focused on lifting the knees up, I had no pain. As soon as I forgot a sharp pain reminded me to do so but I was able to run the full 30 minutes. Obviously, this is a one-time occurrence and not a conclusive result, but this is encouraging. Using this technique, I was not able to go as slow as I wanted going only at 6'45 when I would rather have trained around 7' to 7'30 but this is better than not running at all. As always, my Kine is very listening and quick to adapt so we switched my reinforcement workout from quadriceps/glutes to psoas and hip flexors. As said earlier I am going on a ski vacation, but I will try to go out for a run at least once.

Last update for this update, I am currently on a ski vacation, but I still took time to write a little bit and also post pictures! I went on a run on the 19^th and using the knees up technique had no pain even though the terrain was very mountainous and not what I was used to. The run went well and even if I do not think my objective of running it under 2hours will be feasible I have faith again in my ability to run the half marathon. I only have a little over a month to get back in shape, which is short, but I believe Laura will get me there. Ski vacation is also going very well. I am going slower than I would normally because I do not want to get hurt again. I may still try to do my first black slope this year.

We have been training since October 8, so this update is 3 months in the training.
As planned November picked up the pace with no training under half an hour. This month was intensive, and I began to feel some fatigue accumulating by the end. To be honest I was going too fast on the long slow run planned. I slowed down at the end of November and fatigue went down in early December. If you want to recreate a similar training on your own, the global structure is 3 runs per week beginning with intensive endurance. This is what this means for me:

First run is an intensive endurance training of about 30-40 minutes at 6 to 6:30 minutes per kilometer.
Second run is an interval training which begins with 10 to 20 minutes of slow endurance and finishes with another 10 to 15 minutes of the same without exceeding 40 minutes. You can vary interval size and pace each week.
Third run of the week should be your long slow run. For me a run like this is about 40 minutes to 1 hour at 7 to 8 minutes per kilometer.

Obviously, this is in the second month of training, but you can adapt this formula in the third month either by augmenting pace or increasing the run length.

I have had little injuries along the way but nothing disrupting more than one session since the beginning. Then came December and with it pain in the knee. The pain began around the 10th and developed so that on the 15th I was not able to run more than 15 minutes. This is the weirdest pain I have ever had. I am not capable of identifying exactly where it comes from, which is a first on my end. It's only painful when I run, not when walking, biking, or squatting even with added weight. I was able to have an appointment with a sports physician relatively quickly (on December 31rst) and I am now following a daily muscle reinforcement session. I tried to run again on the 7th without change. I am now using a stationary bike to try and maintain my cardio and will try running again at the end of January. I am only one session in, and I was only able to maintain the rhythm to hit my bpm training zone for only 20 minutes, but I have no doubt this will increase in the future sessions.

As some of you may know from past posts on the ambassador program I was into sports in my teen years. I played rugby and practiced judo, two contact sports with very different styles. Today I want to pick up a team sport again. My current sports of choice are rugby or handball, both high-intensity cardio sports. I have a masters degree in a science discipline (Software Engineering) and during these years in university I loved applying science to solve everyday problems. In the past 3 years I have been on a journey to get back in shape and to do so I wanted to try and apply science to it. I spent the 2 first years body building following videos of a PHD in sport physiology (Dr. Michael Israetel for RP hypertrophy). I applied a science based training and nutrition and managed to gain 10 kg and reduce my body fat (by an undetermined amount). In the past two years working for Sofico in Avignon I spent some nights out playing futsal with some colleagues and quickly realized that I had no cardio which kind of discouraged me so I took last year off of any fitness plan.

I heard about the Sofico marathon through colleagues and they motivated me to take this journey. This brings us to Thursday October 3rd of this year, the first day of the Ambassador program. I was pretty sick at the time and was feeling very unwell going in. We are starting with a day of tests, team building and science applied to running. I already had some knowledge in sports science and was very happy to see that coaches were answering all the questions this knowledge brought up.

The tests were pretty intensive starting with risk prevention exercises to determine which muscles needed to be worked on the most. Second test was an effort test to determine our heart rate and pace training zones. I’m afraid that the fact that I was sick this day will affect my training during the next months. It does not seem like much but the entire program will be based on results from this effort test and if the numbers are off it could cause a big change on the training of the next few months. I’m pretty lucky that this year they added a second test day in January. If the conclusions of this day are off at least we have the opportunity to have a second data set, which I am sure would still have been better due to the 3 months of training. I took the decision to confine myself a week before this second test day to make sure I’m not sick this time.

The actual training started on October 8 with short distance (2.5 km) at a reasonable pace (around 8 min/km). The goal of the first month of training is to create a good base. Strengthen the muscles without risking injury and light cardio work. The pace did not change but I did feel better throughout the month so I did end up going a little bit faster, while sticking to the pace range my coach set. Distance augmented regularly to reach 4 km with some decrease after each peak which makes it easier to recover. Overall this first month felt very easy, I had some pain after my 5th running session but my coach gave me stretching exercises to alleviate the pain and it disappeared in 2 days. The gains are very obvious, I feel better and better while running and this is verifiable by looking at the numbers. These are screenshots from my first and last training of the month.

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