All my life I have used roadwork (running) as the base fitness generator to any physical activity I take part in. Incorporating specific leg exercises like Deadlifts, Squats, leg extensions etc to compliment my running was applied to my workouts but because I ran and because my running always included fairly evil hills I never really worried if I missed ‘Leg day’.
4 years ago a car driver caught me out doing the classic ‘turn right on a bike’ manoeuvre. Sky floor. Ambulance. f***!
I have been rehabbing myself for the last 4 years. Getting back to running (lol more like ‘dragging’) has been THE single most frustrating part of my quest for fitness and to get my body to work how it had done pre accident.
I keep breaking. I can put a good few weeks of training together in the gym but as soon as I lace up the trainers and get out on the road. I break.
In the photo above you will see the right handle bar is obscured. It is bent backwards. Imagine a rodeo rider being flung up from the bucking bronco he is trying to hold onto. During this bit of road violence my right knee got skewered onto the end of the handlebar, with the bar embedded under my knee cap . I also somehow broke my left big toe?? These two injuries have been the limiting factor in me getting back to my roadwork.
I have substituted running with ‘LEG DAYS’, ok not ‘LEG DAYS’ like those mahoosive freaky body builder types.
I had myself CONVINCED that I was working HARD on my legs as I have implemented a huge variety of leg exercises and felt the ‘LEG DAY’ burn. HOWEVER last Saturday I managed my first 10 minute run for quite some months. My left calf kept blowing up and it took me a while to work out that it was all connected to the break of my left big toe.
Anyway I ran out on Saturday, flat, fast across a field, along a disused railway track up a teeny bijou lumpet of a hill along a bit of road and back to my house. Bent over looking like one of those bug eyed fish, gasping for breath akin to a wheezing 40 a day smoker!
Fucked but triumphant!! Left calf was still where it should be. RESULT!!
Sunday both legs feel sore.
Monday I have DOMS (Delayed onset muscle soreness) like my mother has beaten me with a rolling pin. I took myself out for a 21 min run. I ran well, keeping a pace that I could only just aerobically sustain but my legs felt really sore. Not weak. Just sore. A 10 min run on the Saturday had given me pain that NONE of the ‘LEG DAY’ effort over the preceding 4 years had managed to do. Bent over dribbling bug eyed fish impression follows.
DELUDED.
I have been deluded! Not running has left my legs weaker, even with ‘LEG DAY’
If you run you are doing ‘LEG DAY’ every time you run.
If you do not run and only do ‘LEG DAY’ you are, like I have been, DELUDED and missing a valuable addition to your ‘LEG DAY’.
What ever your training. What ever you are training for. Train yourself to run.
Enjoy.
M