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It’s been a while so this week I thought I’d offer an update on how my running is going. As regular readers will know, in the second half of 2025 I had a number of health issues that resulted in my weekly mileage dropping to zero in December.

Since then I’ve been slowing rebuilding my base, adding volume gradually week by week. In doing so I've been trying to avoid the temptation to go too hard too fast, because while it’s tempting to push when I’m feeling good, I know that's the surest way to end up injured.

Instead, I’ve been increasing the mileage slightly week by week, and having a "down” week - where the mileage drops off a little - every four or five weeks. It’s been working well. I've been feeling a lot stronger. Most importantly, I’ve really been enjoying my running.

If you’re facing a similar situation, you could do a lot worse than using this as a template.

It's not all been peaches and cream though. I've started playing football (the sport also known as soccer) again and that plays havoc with my feet, courtesy of bone spurs on my heels.

These are a symptom of a condition I have called ankylosing spondylitis, which causes bone spurs to grow in areas where ligaments meet bone - especially along the spine. And that's (part of) the reason I have the flexibility of a 75 year old.

This heel pain has been particularly bad in the past week, which means I’ve reduced by running volume. But in order to mitigate the effect of this, I've been selective about what I’ve foregone.

Essentially, I’ve focused on keeping the quality sessions. So this week I’ve done a hills session on Wednesday (good for strength) and a speed session this morning (I’m writing mid-morning on Friday).

Tomorrow I’ll treat Parkrun as a 5k tempo run (a hard, but controlled effort), and then I’m running the SEQ Trail Series Ewen Maddock Dam event on Sunday. At almost 15k, that will be my long run.

That should give me about 32k of volume this week - respectable but well short of the 46k I’ve been averaging each week for the past five weeks. But it should be 32 quality kilometres, and that’s what counts. (I picked up this tip from Coach Bennett and the crew at the Nike Run Club app when I was training for the Sydney Marathon last year.)

Cardiac adventures continue

The most serious of my health travails in 2025 was a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, a form of irregular heartbeat, which had gone undiagnosed for around two years because it was completely symptomless.

That time period was problematic because it turned out my heart had been out of a regular “sinus"rhythm for so long, it was really hard to get it back on track. And while it wasn't having any real impact on my running, towards the end of the year I had pretty much accepted I was going to end up with a pacemaker.

So I was a little surprised and absolutely delighted when I saw my cardiologist right at the end of the year and he told me I was back in a sinus rhythm. While that was great news, my heart has still been doing some weird things.

The biggest impact of coming out of AF is that my heart rate has fallen considerably. Previously when I was working hard on a run my heartrate would regularly get into the high 180s, the 190s or even the low 200s. For a 57 year old, that’s high.

Now it's a much more respectable 150 when I’m working hard. Mostly. It’s developed a weird habit of spiking early in a run, even when the effort level is relatively low. It sits at this artificially high level for a kilometre or two, then drops back to what I would expect.

This doesn't happen on every run, but it’s happening reasonably frequently. And I can feel it. In those runs I can feel I’m working hard at the start, and I can tell when my ticker has righted itself because all of a sudden the effort reduces while the pace remains the same.

My resting heart rate is also really low now, often in the 30s. While I definitely run more than most, I am a long way from the elite endurance athlete that suggests!

But apart from those relatively minor issues, two months into 2026 I feel like my running is going really well. Which is just as well, because after Ewen Maddock this weekend, the next race on my dance card is the Dead Cow Gully backyard ultra at the end of May. And I’ll need to be on form for that!

As an aside, I was interested to discover my tendency to grow bone spurs and my irregular heartbeat are linked. It seems people lucky enough to have ankylosing spondylitis can end up with atrial fibrillation as a bonus. It feels like winning first prize in a genetic raffle!

Upcoming Events

There are way too many events for me to list everything that’s happening around the country, but here is a selection of upcoming races (with a bias towards South East Queensland).

The Running Calendar website is a great source if you want a comprehensive understanding of what’s available around the country.