Oops, forgot to recover

I guess I forgot after last weekend's 50k run that I need to take a week to recover.

On Sunday, the day after the 50k I participated in the Pineland Farms Winter Triathlon as part of a team. I started the race with a 4k snowshoe run, Randy was going to bike, and Jeff ski. Unfortunately right before the start of the race Randy had a catastrophic bike failure. I decided to go ahead and run in the event that a miracle might happen and by the time I finished his bike would be working again. No such luck. I still had a pretty good run and was happy with where I finished. Despite waking up with a very sore right ankle it didn't bother me during the run. Overall I'd say I felt better after 50k on the trails than I did after the 10 mile road roace I ran in early February.

Monday I took a day off and on Tuesday went to Twin Brook. I brought my snowshoes and it turned out they were definitely needed following the recent late winter snow dumpage we received on Sunday night. Jim was the only other person to show and he had something that resembled surf boards strapped to his feet so needless to say the running wasn't very easy for him. After about 3.5 miles we decided to call it quits. I was feeling good and could have gone longer but decided there wasn't much point.

Wednesday I ran straight from work in the evening and did two laps of Back Cove. It was great starting an evening run with plenty of light in the sky, although it was dark by the time I finished. Conditions on the path were pretty good considering the recent snow, there were some clear patches of dirt, a little ice, but most of the path was covered in packed snow. Not fast conditions but certainly runnable. I was feeling good and did 7.44 miles at a 7:41 pace.

Here's where things start to fall apart. I got up early Thursday morning and less than 12 hours after starting my Wednesday night run I was back at Back Cove for a few more laps. This time I didn't feel so good. No major problems, it just felt a hell of a lot harder than it had the night before. Conditions were the same on the path but I struggled to maintain the pace that the group was running at. I don't know how I motivated myself to do two laps but after finishing I wished I hadn't. I finished this run with 9.23 miles at an average 8:23 pace. It shouldn't have been so difficult to run at that pace even in the less than ideal conditions. Immediately following the run my right ankle (remember the pain on Sunday morning) became very stiff and sore, and the bottoms of my feet were aching , especially the heels. I suspect I've developed a mild case of plantar fascitis, probably due to the imbalance of lots of running and little to no stretching. Dumbass.

I was in pain/discomfort all day on Thursday, even just sitting at my desk it hurt. In the evening I rolled my heel on a little spikey ball that Emma bought me a few years ago (per Erik's recommendation) and that seemed to help. I'll continue to roll it today while I'm at work and also ice it. I still plan to run at Bradbury tomorrow, will try not to overdo it, and will try to be better about stretching immediately after I finish instead of just standing around in the cold and then driving home. We'll see.