Trail Monster Running

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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Slipping Off The Schedule

Not that I really have a training schedule, but if I did I'm afraid I'd be falling behind. This ankle thing that I didn't think anything of back in December is really starting to hold me back. I had a few good runs last weekend but this week didn't start so well.

Monday was a planned day off, Tuesday I was too busy with work to get out for a run. Wednesday I had a meeting out of town, got dropped off at home after work and then ran back to my office to get my car. There was some definite tightness in my achilles for the first mile, it lingered into the second mile which was all uphill, but then eased off over the next mile which was gradually downhill. After that second mile I had a nice progression of increased speed: 7:47, 7:32, 7:28, 7:22, 7:05. It helped that I had a tail wind.

Unfortunately it seemed that pushing the pace a bit, and then immediately getting into my car and driving home, followed by sitting on my ass eating dinner lead to my achilles tightening right back up again.

time: 46:27
distance: 6.21 miles
pace: 7:29

Thursday I decided that I needed to get in a short/slow run. I realized that there probably isn't enough of that in my training plan. Earlier in the day I had another session with Dr. Jamie Raymond, he identified a long chain of tightness running from my right glutes to hamstring to calf to achilles. I didn't come away from this visit with such a noticable improvement in my ankle, but I did feel like a few related areas were addressed that will help the ankle.

I set off for my run around 6:00, and about 3 minutes into the run I stopped and considered turning around and walking home because the pain in my achilles was so bad. I stretched for a minute or so, walked a little and then resumed thee run, that seemed to be enough to reduce the pain to a very tolerable level, but it didn't make me feel very good about my long term long distance running goals.

time: 34:39
distance: 4.08 miles
pace: 8:29

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