Alive and kicking

Don't worry, I'm still alive! I've been swamped with literally everything since I last posted, but now I've got a little free time on my hands.

The running has been going good and the knee is feeling much better. The pain I had been having (see last post) was actually a product of me doing my alignment exercises a bit wrong. During the week of July 30 I only ran half a mile, but I had a whole bunch of elliptical work in there mixed in with some biking and swimming. The same goes for the week of August 6, but that week I was able to get 15 miles of actual running in. This week culminated in 23 miles. I don't think I mentioned it yet but I'm following the half-marathon training plan they had in last month's Runner's World, so on Tuesday I tried 2 miles at 10K pace, 2x1 mile at 5K pace, and 2x800m at slightly faster than 5K pace with some recovery time in between each of those. Sounded good to me, but the problem was my calves weren't ready for it. This new running form stresses the muscles more than the bones, and the soreness was amplified due to the actual running I didn't do a couple weeks before that. So I stopped after the 2 miles....add in a mile warm-up and cool down and that gave me 4 miles.

Wednesday the calves actually felt much better, but I went swimming anyway and had a real good workout. Thursday I was to do a 25 minute hard tempo run....and it SUCKS to do those in the summer time. I went at about 10am but the sun was already well up and sort of angry. I only made it about 19 minutes before I had to call it quits and cool down the rest of the way, but during those 19 minutes I was hauling at 5:55/mile.

I swam again on Friday and capitalized on the good workout I had two days before. The pool I swim at is olympic size (50m long) and previously I had only been able to make it two full laps (200m) freestyle before I was just about dead. I've slowly been realizing that I've been using my legs too much and my arms too little....so I fooled with my stroke a little during this workout and was able to go 400m with a 3-5 second break when I hit the wall every 50m. That made me pretty happy though because I've come a looooong way since March. And it gives me that much more confidence of doing a triathlon in the future.

Yesterday was a heck of a run! I went 10 miles, the first 6 of which were at an easy pace....which happened to be like 7:15-7:20/mile. But then the last 4 were supposed to be at half-marathon pace plus 20-30 seconds. The training plan calls this a race simulation run. So...during the run I was thinking that 6:20 pace during the half-marathon sounds good....I mean, I've ran 6:10-6:15 pace during a 10 mile race and felt like I had some energy left in the tank, so I don't think 6:20 for 13.1 miles is setting the bar too high. Ok well maybe a little....but I ended up doing those last 4 miles around 6:40 pace and felt REALLY good. The only bad part is that I was really sore today but that's the product of working hard. Today I biked 6 miles and also jogged an easy 4 miles as well.

Oh yea, and because my knee was hurting me a couple weeks ago, I ended up not doing the Leg It For Life 5K that I was planning on doing last weekend as my comeback race. I felt it was better to be even more patient and not rush back. I know I'm definitely running the half-marathon, which is the 11th race in the 12 race Playmakers race series, but I'm thinking of also running the Playmakers Autumn Classic 8K two weeks before that...which is the 10th race in the series. It's a pretty awesome and scenic race that goes around Lake Lansing, so we'll see how I feel.

Well I think I blabbered enough to make up for 3 weeks of not posting.

"I went a little too hard the first mile and paid for it. I was trying to run 4:40 pace, and went 4:30, 5:00 and whatever the third mile was." --Grant Robison, winner of the Leg It For Life 5K in 14:51