Mon: 5 miles
Tue: 6.5 miles
Wed: 7.5 miles, including strides
Thu: 9 miles, including light fartlek
Fri: 7.5 miles
Sat: 5 miles
Sun: 10.5 miles, including Blue Ridge Veterans Celebration 5k in 17:01
Total: 51 miles
Well, it didn’t take but two days for me to learn that recovering from the Charleston Distance Run is not a quick process. My quads were pretty much trashed the day after, so Monday I decided to head to Greenfield so I could run on mostly flat, soft surfaces. Two miles into that run I came very close to stopping because of how bad my legs felt. It was mostly my quads, although my calves were barking at me a little as well. I stuck the run out through five miles though and was glad I did, as I finally started to feel at least somewhat better the last ten minutes. Tuesday I had hoped I would be a little closer to normal, and I was, but the emphasis there would be on the word “little.” Whereas my quads weren’t as sore just walking around as they had been the previous two days, they were still plenty sore throughout the run. So, I had heard that recovering from CDR is similar to recovering from a marathon in terms of how much the race beats you up, and I can now confirm that it definitely takes a while to get your legs feeling normal again.
On Wednesday I decided to try a few strides towards the end of the run. I almost didn’t go through with them because my quads were still very much on the sore side, but I went ahead and did two laps of ins-and-outs, two 150m buildups, and two more laps of ins-and-outs with the hopes of shaking some of the junk out of my legs. I didn’t get after the strides very hard at all, but just turned my legs over a little with the goal of enhancing the recovery process. It must have worked, because the soreness was mostly gone in time for the Thursday evening fartlek workout. This was just a light one more or less to test how my legs would react. The workout was two sets of 3/2/1 min “on” with 2 min recoveries between everything. I wasn’t expecting much at all, but it actually didn’t go too bad. I got progressively faster throughout and wound up averaging 5:39 pace for the faster sections.
Friday was a rough one. I think the faster running of the previous two days caught up to me, plus it was very muggy out and it just worked on me. Saturday wasn’t a whole lot better, and when I finished that run I was a little frustrated, somewhat discouraged, and very much concerned about racing the next day. The race turned out pretty well though, especially all considered, and I’ll post a recap in the next day or two.
Anyway, I’m not necessarily pleased that I had to turn this week into basically nothing more than a recovery week, but it was definitely the right thing to do. I’ve pushed too hard too soon after longer races in the past, and it’s led to injury on more than one occasion. This week I hope to get back to normal training and also get to work on getting some speed in my legs. I’m very much tired of the 5:30 pace barrier it seems I’ve been stuck behind for a while and it’s time to see if I can break through it. Not only will that put my 5k times more in the range of something I’ll be happy with, but I’m convinced that if I can get my short distance pace to a point where it’s faster it will both improve my form and help my long distance pace feel easier and therefore be a boost all the way up to the marathon distance. As a side note, I’m hoping this week doesn’t turn into yet another down week, especially since that would basically make three in a row. However, I’ve been having some issues with a wisdom tooth, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to have it pulled. Not sure how that will impact my training, but I know it will mess things up for sure. Oh well, all I can do is go with the flow.
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