First week back with an actual schedule and it went pretty well. I still have eons to go before I get even close to race shape, but I feel like I made some good progress and adapted well to easing back into real training. On the injury front, things are still holding and continuing to get ever so slightly better each week. The good thing is I don’t have any aches or pains that actually hamper training the least bit and what issues I do have are heading in the right direction. I wish I could just jump to 100% immediately, but I’ve accepted that’s not gonna happen, so I’ll just have to continue to err on the side of caution, be diligent about doing things right, and play with the cards I’m dealt.
This week started with a recovery run on the Hanging Rock trail on Monday followed by a light turnover workout on the Roanoke College track on Tuesday. Andrew and I did 5X1 min on/off that day, which was basically my reintroduction to faster paced running. Wednesday was supposed to be a hilly hour at a decent effort, and while I won’t mention Andy Sayers by name, thanks to one of the three parties involved in the run, it turned out to be a little faster than I bargained for. We actually hit sub-6 min pace during one mile, and all of it was done on the old Star City Half Marathon course, which is anything but easy. Thursday was another recovery day (in a nasty rain) and Friday was a hill workout. Matthew, Andrew, and I did that one together and used Mill Mountain as our “hill.” My legs were pretty well dead heading into it, but it turned out to be a really good workout. We did 4X3 min up with jog down recovery and got a little farther up the mountain with each repeat. It was the perfect way to run it. I finished the week off with a recovery run at Greenfield on Saturday while Leslie and Kaitlyn walked, then a long run of just over 1:45 on Sunday. That one turned out to be another good one and was as solid as I’ve felt to date in a longer run. My hip flexors were starting to get a little tired/sore the last 10 min, but I even felt like I had another 15 min in me if I’d wanted to do it. Thanks to Andy, Andrew, and Matthew for coming out and helping get me through that one.
Anyway, as specified by Coach Nippert, I didn’t run a bunch of familiar courses or wear my Garmin except on the days where I wanted to monitor pace, so I don’t necessarily have an exact mileage count. If I had to estimate, I’d say upper 50’s. What’s important is I got in four solid days and worked a variety of systems in the process. I also felt like I recovered pretty well and each day was in line with what I needed and was ready to do. That’s the advantage to having a good schedule and sticking to it. Now what I need to do is stack a bunch of these weeks on top each other and slowly but sure build some fitness, and that is precisely the plan.
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