Whipped

Whipped, one simple word that describes how I feel right now as well as what happened to me in last night’s turnover workout (more on that to come). I’ve been feeling run down for close to two weeks now and my quads have just felt hammered as of late. I’m not totally sure what’s at fault, but I need to get it figured out soon because it’s definitely affecting not only the quality of my training but other parts of life as well. I’ve started trying to boost my iron intake, get a little extra rest, and run my recovery days slower, so I’m hoping the combination of those things does the trick. I guess when I step back and objectively look at things I’ve been through a lot both physically and mentally over the past couple weeks, so maybe I just need to let my body catch up a little. I hope that’s all.

As far as the aforementioned workout last night, it really didn’t go that bad. Jim, Andy, and I hit the streets of Salem with a plan of doing 6X1 min on/off in the middle of the run. I felt like garbage in the first couple miles and the blowing, blinding snow didn’t help. I wasn’t at all excited about picking up the pace, but once we did, I started to feel better. I kept my efforts very under control. Sometimes you know you can push through feeling bad and sometimes you know that if you do it will do more harm than good. Last night was the latter situation. As a result, Jim, and particularly Andy who was just flat out getting’ after it, left me in the dust time and time again. I finally started to hold my own in the last couple, including the final one where I opened it up and actually went pretty quick. That one felt the best of them all too. It’s weird how sometimes you can feel terrible and want to quit but pick up the pace instead and actually feel better once you’re going faster. In any event, I felt much better after the run than before, so I was glad we went through with it. We wound up covering 8.5 miles in 54:41, which is 6:26 pace, so we must have been moving fairly well throughout. I know Andy was in the minuters!

In any event, I head to the doc tomorrow morning to get the stitches out of my chin. In looking at it, I sure hope it doesn’t bust back open once they’ve been removed. It actually looks like it could. That really was some kind of gash! Maybe all the blood loss from that little mishap is one of the reasons I’ve been feeling run down – ha, ha. Actually I guess it seriously could be a part of it.

Anyway, I’ve got a distance run planned for tonight and a tempo-style workout planned for Friday. Hopefully my body will respond favorably. I’m noticing that my strength is coming around nicely, but at this point in time all I can say is it’s going to be EXTREMELY UGLY when I step on the track for some real workouts. Oh well, no pain no gain, so bring it! It’s all part of the process. I just hope I can be smart/patient and suffer through some awful workouts until I get back where I need to be. Guess we’re about to find out.