OUR sports customer of the month, Rachel Duffy, shares her story of how she overcame considerable training setbacks to set a new PB in the London Marathon last month - her first in four years.
Rachel Duffy writes:
“I've been using CurranNZ for nearly a year now. Towards the end of last year, I suffered an ankle injury (peroneal tendonitis) so was off running for a while.
I started training for the London Marathon in late December/early January and everything went well for a few weeks until the ankle problem flared up again. I did my last "long" (ha!) run of 25km at the end of February, almost two months to the day before the race.
Then followed three weeks entirely off running, before a few weeks of a slow build-up (9, 12, 14, 18km as my long run, with just two very short (no more than 3 - 6 km) steady runs during the week) and then a taper before the race.
Throughout this time, I'd been taking two CurraNZ a day, and instead of running I did two spin classes a week, two hot yoga classes and lots of ankle stability/strength rehab work. I was feeling incredibly under-prepared for the marathon, suffice it to say!
On the day, however, despite my lack of training, I felt great. I never felt like I hit the wall, and even managed a sprint finish in the last few hundred metres!
I had been worried I would have to stop and walk at some points during the race, but I managed to run pretty much throughout and finished in 3:41:18 (GFA!).
This was my second marathon - my first was four years ago and I finished in 4:22, so this was a 40-minute PB despite limited training!
My Strava tells me that my average weekly mileage for the four months building up to the race was just 20.8km a week (just a little shy of the recommended/traditional 40-50 miles, then!).
I really don't think I could have done that without the endurance-boosting effects of CurraNZ.
My recovery after the race was really good - given my injury history (and limited training) I was fully expecting to have very sore joints and muscle damage / DOMS for weeks after, but everything settled down within a few days and I was back running and in the gym for a light leg session by the end of the week! Really, really pleased.
Thank you for such an amazing product! I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with CurraNZ and a proper (non-injury ridden) training cycle for my next race.
Rachel Duffy