The Marathon Journey Began…

With Lelia’s help Jaime was able to get on top of her knee pain and start to increase her running loads. From there Jaime had the guidance of one of our other physio coaches, Lleyton who helped construct a strength and conditioning, and running program in which they regularly touched base to check in with and adjust where needed. Jaime attributes this to be the most important part to her prep in setting her up for success for the marathon.

Jaime found sessions where she was training alone and days she was lower on energy the most challenging to stay motivated during her prep. What kept Jaime going through these times was the feeling of accomplishment when completing her long runs and realising what her body was actually capable of doing. She found this feeling pretty amazing and definitely gave that runner’s high!

As with most marathon preps some niggly injuries can be common to pop up and Jaime was not one to avoid this. On top of the knee pain previously mentioned Jaime also experienced some issues with her hip after tackling some tough hills during the Toowoomba half marathon. Jaime seeked regular treatment to get on top of this and her strengthening program was adjusted accordingly to assist in settling her symptoms.

One particular thing Jaime would change about her programming in the future is to design it around her menstrual cycle as she found her peak running weeks would line up with when her energy was lowest during her cycle (luteal phase). Whereas in the future she will plan to put her peak running weeks where her energy is the highest (follicular/ovulating phase). She is interested to see whether this makes a difference in how she manages her training load and how she feels throughout.