Nothing new on the western front.
War in Israel, especially in the last two and a half years is not new. On Feb 28th, the 4th round with Iran started (I think? Can't remember honestly) and no one was surprised.
That was the only thing that stopped my life completely. Just a hard stop. And it was actually for the better. Because as you've seen, in February, I really crashed mentally. And though I started healing slowly and emptying my schedule - nothing would be even close to just, completely hitting pause on my life.
And so, March was a dramatic change to my life. Think how it feels to drop from 3 daily on-the-road hours to 0. Working from home, training near home. I felt like I had so much free time. Of course, that didn't really manifest because now I was living in houses that are not my apartment. And living with people is known to consume way more time than living alone. So in total, I had a lot of "working 'til 12 am" days. But still, life was way calmer.
That's a training log though, so what happened to my training?
The first 3 days - I trained on a road or grass nearby and improvised. On the 4th day, I got back to a stadium. But that was because I lived pretty far from my hometown for the first week of that war. Then I got back to my hometown. And then the real change to my training took place. Because I live in a city, where rules are way more strict than where I normally train - which is near a bunch of small towns ("moshavs"). Because of that, I didn't have proper access to the stadium and when I did, it was without equipment for a large amount of the time... So training got way more complicated.
physio again
I went to physiotherapy once again. They didn't really find what's going on in my hamstring. I insisted that it's probably not in my left hamstring and that the pain there is just a symptom but whatever. I got some nice exercises from them. A few weeks later I returned to doing nordics almost every warmup and inner and outer hips strengthening
march training
A big note about March. I slept horribly.
We had sirens almost every night, and I'm just bad at sleeping tbh. It was hard falling asleep again, and no matter how hard I would try go to sleep early. E.g. 9 hours before waking up time. With the sirens + time it took to fall back to sleep I would sleep less than 8. So, that was probably not good for sports.
But, other than that, Training was super normal.
March may be one of the only months that got absolutely zero competitions. Nothing really happens. You just put your head down and work. Because there was war, we didn't really go out or something. Life got simple very fast. Training -> Work from home -> Training -> Work from home.
Long jump kept looking good. In fact, in training long jump was always looking pretty promising. The problem is, that really doesn't show in competitions. Or at least, yet. Hard to know, really.
Then I bought a car
Which you would think - how is that connected to training???
Well if you read the last blogs, you saw that my biggest problem is that I'm too much on the roads. So, fast forward month later. I think I drive less. But it's hard to say. Because most of the time I still use public transport because you just can't move inside Tel Aviv with a car. Parking & traffic is a mess. But on the weekends - it sure saved me a lot of running and nerves (to get to the buses. In Israel, there are no buses from Friday eve until Saturday eve, which is the only time you don't work - and actually wanna move around)
competitions!
It's April now! Somewhere along the start of April, a ceasefire started. Which means, I went back to Tel Aviv and my normal life. But it is nowhere near as bad as it was before. This time, I insisted on not being on the roads as much. I figured out a way to train more in Tel Aviv's stadium. And overall, it was way better. Life felt much more manageable.
I wrote too many times in these logs about how I'm constantly fighting my own mind about wanting to quit because having so much other stuff going on. And then when a training feels alright - suddenly I don't want to quit. All of that never really stopped. And probably won't stop until the last day of this season. But that's impacting me greatly, and really I'm just pushing through right now. Probably not healthy, but it's May now, not a lot left, and I'm going to enjoy my-might-be-last-days in track.
I had two competitions. The first was on April 9th. It was in a brand new stadium. I ran a 24 something in the 200 and 11.99 in the 100.
Yes.
You read it right.
I ran a 12s 100. This was, my slowest, time, ever. Since I started track in 8th grade.
I will save you the feelings I was going through.
I came back to that stadium, ran a 12.04.
Horrible.
I will say though, that everyone is running terribly in that stadium. Maybe because the track is still super soft & new. Maybe because we were just out of a war. But I don't wanna make excuses. I really don't know what to say. I wanted to quit right there.
But long jump did look decent at training, no matter how you flip it. So, yea maybe 100m is not like a 30m runup, maybe the track was trash, maybe it was the wind (it was windy). Idk.
Anyways, I kept pushing. Even if it turns out to be a grand failure, at least I tried.
Two stadiums I discovered in April:
Since those competitions, I decided that no matter what, I need to run way more. And drop gym entirely.
So we're talking (April):
- accel. with sleds. Then, without. Then - 30 in, 40 out, 50 in x3 - did two sessions of that
- 2 long-rest sets of 200 x 2 (between the 200s - 3 minutes) + 2x150 - times: 24,26 | 25,27 | 19,18
- 250-200-150-100-50. Not really a fast session but still a run
- 200x5
- A lot of sprint hurdles running
Ofc I did do a little bit of gym, a lot of plyo and a lot of long jump in between.
Running more gave me the chance to work on my technique more (internally, with myself), on where I position my hips.
One of my major problems in long jump is that I'm stopping on the board. It might be a major problem for most of the jumpers. I feel like this jump was pretty non-stopping.
Though I will say, that I hurt my heel on a jump at the start of April. And it wasn't a small deal. I really hit something hard there. And in this jump that you'll see below, I really try to not put pressure on my heel. For two reasons. First, too much pressure on the heel = you're stopping. Second, it would hurt like hell.
may!
Now the season really starts. I'll have like 3-4 competitions this month. And this time, I'll actually be doing long jump. So it'll be interesting. And undeniable. We'll see how far I jump.
I'm going into this month with a little heel injury. If I don't stop on the board - I'll probably won't feel it anymore. Regardless, it gets better with time. I'm stretching my Achilles every day. Also - I have an discomfort / pain in the upper left hamstring. Something I've been carrying since the start of this season. Every training session, and sometimes outside training - I do nordics and inner & outer thigh strengthening. The thing that I think may be the game changer is working on my right outer thigh. It sounds weird I know but it feels like it is wayyy weaker than the left one.
