Thank you Justin for sharing your situation. As a way for everyone to learn, let’s dive into what you can be doing during this time (hopefully you don’t mind me using some findings from your data).
- Heart rate zone training – It doesn’t appear, at least in Training Peaks, that you are following heart rate zone training principles. Too much, too soon, too often is, unfortunately, one of the main reasons for injury. Dive in and let these vital training principles guide your training.
- Running mechanics – Science suggests that it takes 10,000+ repetitions to override old habits and begin to ingrain new. Thus static running drills must happen daily for weeks (often months) on end. And given your running data, you are definitely heal striking!
- Physical Therapy – Given poor running mechanics, athletes also develop compensation patterns and imbalances. Thus, in order to ever run healthy again, you must work with a good sports minded PT to resolve these underlying issues. Advanced Kinetics PT that provided the information for injury prevention clinic has been open and operating through this time. https://advancedkinetics.com/
- Strength training – As we talked about in the injury prevention clinic, you must rewire the neuromuscular patterns (not just the muscular) to ensure your gluts are engaging and activating properly. Overstriding weakens your gluts and breaks down the neuromuscular connection. Thus your strength training must prioritize this focus.
- Sleep – While your Training Peaks data doesn’t have recent sleep data, your past sleep data is concerning. Your body can only heal when you sleep. Thus this must be a priority for every endurance athlete. 7-9 hours minimum is recommended daily.
While triathlon is 3 sports, as you can see, it is all of the little things that make your training and racing sustainable and successful. So, while you are only able to do 1 sport for the time being (or two sports for the rest of you), there are many ways you can continue to elevate your training. You have your homework!
