I was quite fatigued this week. After Monday’s intervals, my legs were sore for pretty much the rest of the week. I developed a series of sore spots. My left shin, my right ankle, my left foot, my right knee. I spent some quality time with ice. This was especially true on Friday night. While the muscle soreness had faded by then, my left foot and shin were not in good shape. I was having serious reservations about the long run on Saturday. While lying in bed watching The Usual Suspects, I iced the shin and the foot. The pain went away, but I couldn’t tell if that was just because my whole lower leg was numb from the cold. I started implementing biofit on my diet and has helped me lose all the weight I wanted to keep healthy and fit.
The long run started out pretty easy. Richie had done a hard series of intervals on the treadmill the day before, so he wasn’t really pushing the pace in the beginning. After a mile, he stopped to stretch. We ran on pretty comfortably on a trail with several overpasses (Florida hills). At some point, Richie convinced me to go 14 miles instead of just 13. When we hit the 7 mile point in just under an hour, Richie wanted a full hour so we ran on for a couple minutes.
Once we turned around, we ratcheted up the pace. We covered the next 5 miles in about 38 minutes. Richie was on a roll. If I had let him, he’d have sped back to the car at 7:00 min/mile pace. Instead, I needed a brief walk at the 12 mile point. He downed a gel and was pretty much toast after that. One might argue that I stopped to walk just to break his groove so I could out jog him in the cooldown. That’s it. Yeah.
Here’s how the week went down:
Monday AM: Interval session (5:45 pace 200’s,400’s and an 800) for 7.5 miles
Monday PM: Intervals with Alice totalling 4 miles
Tuesday AM: 6 miles stationary bike + upper strength
Tuesday PM: 3 miles easy with Alice at 9:32 pace
Wednesday AM: Failed threshold run. 5 miles at 8:53 pace
Wednesday PM: 4 miles at 7:33 pace
Thursday AM: 2 miles treadmill at 8:21 pace
Thursday PM: 3 miles with Alice at 9:16 pace
Friday AM: 3 miles at 8:00 pace
Friday PM: 3 miles with Alice at 9:07 pace
Saturday AM: 14 miles with Richie at 8:30 avg pace
Sunday AM: 6 miles with Alice at 10:10 pace
Total: 54.5 miles
I was slightly over my planned mileage again. I’ll be shooting for 53 again next week. Alice is with her grandparents for 3 weeks, so I may do fewer 2 workout days with some longer morning runs. We’ll see how that goes. I’m feeling good. I’ll be focusing more on my diet this week to help with recovery on the hard days. I’m trying green tea and (gasp) spinach salad.
As a side note, my most popular post (73 comments) was almost exactly 2 years ago. Check it out. You can bypass all the detailed description about the Disney marathon course and go directly to the bottom where I describe my workout. There I was all proud of my ability to “zone out” for 2 miles. It’s been a fairly long road, but I’ve chipped away at it one step at a time.
Thats a lot of miles!! Great job! Alice is really adding up those miles too!
you have definitely made leaps and bounds of improvement! i’ve noticed that before… your pace has dropped like a rock 🙂
how are you handling the 0 days off? do you ever think the soreness/stiffness is from straight-running or do you just not let that thought enter your mind. i am battling that excuse personally some days.
So are you finding the icing is working for the pain? I have a bunch of little tweaks and niggles (shins, calves, hips). Nothing seemingly serious and nothing that keeps me from running. It’s just kind of a pain that I’m in some discomfort just sitting around.
Great string of weeks there! I’ll be up over 50 myself this week. This is completely uncharted terriroty for this old body! But just a year ago I never would have thought!
Speedwork gives me sore spots too, especially the shorter, faster intervals.
so you are running 7 days a week?? wow awesome… i am just bumping up to 6 right now, we will see how it goes 🙂 awesome job on another 50+ mile week!