Winter Running Thread

[OakLeaf]

RnR, that's great! Keep getting stronger.

It's been another up and down week for me. A lot of figurative running around last week left me tired. And with the bodywork from last week and the week before, I'm getting to the point of some major breakthroughs on some very old injuries and imbalances, like stuff that goes back to high school. Which on one level is spectacularly great, but on the other hand is changing my biomechanics in ways that aren't necessarily the best thing to do five weeks out from a race. Came time for Sunday's T-pace workout on another very hot day, and I just didn't have it in me. I dawdled and procrastinated away the morning, thought I might just modify the pace a bit, but stupid Garmin Connect was down and my watch doesn't let me edit workouts on the watch itself. As I told my DH, it wasn't that I was really feeling terribly beat up, it was just, if I could go another day without someone (including myself) beating me up, that would be great. So, I just did the mileage at an easy pace, and even that kind of beat me up.

Monday I took completely off. Normally I'd bike to yoga early-early and do a little recovery run before class. But between the time change and some worrisome soreness in one Achilles tendon, I just took a rest day. Drove down to the wildlife refuge to check on the bald eagles' nest and see what else we could see.

Today was even hotter, and my scheduled workout was intervals ... and it went fine. Hit all my numbers, and I don't feel excessively spent now, even with the heat. One thing I did, that I've been doing on most interval days, is to do my warm-up, then come back home for a quick ice water and a gel, then go back out to do my intervals on the MUP just across the road. Today I also set out an ice-cold wet towel in my little cooler. I'm pretty sure that's what let me complete the intervals successfully. Yay.

The only weird thing now is that my right ankle, the one that the Achilles isn't bothering me, is just sore. I'm pretty sure what's going on is that at least some of the ankle immobility I've had, actually comes from the hip and thoracolumbar restrictions that we've been working on. So all of a sudden my ankle is moving in ways that my muscles aren't used to supporting ... that's the ankle I sprained several times years ago, though it's been very stable for at least the past 10 years. Going to be keeping an eye on it and having some targeted conversations with the LMT. And definitely keeping on with the single leg raise/lower and balancing work that I've been diligent about *after* my Achilles started bothering me. Sigh.