New highs, new lows. I’d planned (or, rather, Coach Kevin had planned) 95 miles for me this week. While that certainly wasn’t a new high, I was looking forward to hitting that number. It makes me feel like a superhero when I can emerge from two 90+ weeks with energy to spare.
The highs this week were a 14+ mile recovereasy run that was a lot faster than I’d planned. But it was fast despite a very low effort. I cruised along at sub-9:00 at avg 72% MHR. This after a fairly challenging 22 miler on Sunday. I was feeling very up after that on Tuesday.
I had enough energy for strides on Wednesday morning, although I didn’t run them crazily fast. Wednesday was a big mileage day, and the effects showed on Thursday. That was one of the week’s lows. I didn’t feel that great going into the run and I was struggling to run an 11:30 mile at 67%. Even though I lowered my expectations accordingly I was still shocked at how slow I was running at 89-90% effort.
Shocked and depressed, actually. I started questioning everything and finding fault everywhere. I was running too many miles. I was too fat. I was too old. I simply lacked talent. This went on for most of the afternoon, but then I pulled myself out of my funk by looking over training logs and realizing that sometimes you just have a shitty day.
I took it very easy for the next few days in order to rest up for Sunday’s sandwich run and race in Central Park, which provided the most extreme highs and lows of the week: what started out as a great race ended up an instantaneous DNF.
Now it’s Monday and I didn’t run at all today. Instead I continued to ice, compress and massage my hamstring. Then I went out for a 3.5 walk with a few experimental little jogs. The hamstring is still twingey, and it does not like going uphill. But it’s only been about 36 hours. I’ll see how it is tomorrow and go from there.
Filed under: central park, injury, racing, training | Tagged: nyrr, poland spring marathon kickoff | 2 Comments »
Races Like a Girl 