Busy

Training is picking up a notch for sure this week. While I was feeling a little flat early in the week and even at the end of last week, today the legs were a little more spry. So funny how cyclical training like this is. I said to Ali that my mental and physical state after some really good or bad runs usually means down the road, whether that's 4 or 14 days later, things are bound to flip to the opposite side, usually with the same intensity. What's that they say about actions and reactions....

It's just impossible and unrealistic to be feeling good all the time. Making real gains in your training means having ups and downs. Big ones and little ones, and staying level headed as best you can throughout the process.

This past weekend I was also in upstate NY for my college friend Streets' bachelor party. It's always so fun seeing my college buddies. Such an entertaining group dynamic that I really miss sometimes. As you might imagine, that weekend wasn't super conducive to hard training, so I moved some days around and took a day off (which was planned) and an easy run. On Monday I was still feeling pretty flat trying to do a "step up" style workout which was 2x15 minutes at tempo (z3) HR immediately followed by 5 minutes at z4 HR. I couldn't make it happen for the second set and had to bail towards the beginning of the 5 minute chunk. I think my body was still catching up on sleep and recovery from the weekend.

Tuesday I did 21.6 miles in Jackson at mostly z2 pace. Sort of stayed on the edge of z1 and z2. Average for the run was 6:15 pace, and my legs were feeling a little better at this point. I was dealing with some pain in my right hip area that was a little concerning. I have since done a bunch of hip exercises and things have definitely calmed down a lot and I'm not as worried about it. It's amazing how much of a difference that makes for me right now. I can't slack on that stuff. Easy 30:00 double later that afternoon.

This morning was an easy 7 miles followed by an hour long "plyo run" in the PM. This entailed a warmup, then 4x strides, butt kicks, high knees, karaoke, and high skips for 30 seconds each with 30 seconds rest in between each drill. Harder than you'd think. Very different than just straight running, as doing all that repetitive jumping felt like I was waking up other aspects of my gait cycle that I don't typically use. I covered about 8 miles during that run, bringing me to about 43 miles in the last three days. Fairly typical mileage wise from the last couple weeks. I do have some more intense workouts later in the week which should add to the workload a lot compared to previous weeks. Hills tomorrow, then some quick track work on Friday.

AH