This week was a little more intense than previous weeks. It had its ups and downs. The training is going well, but towards the end of the week some issues started popping up. Hopefully I can deal with them quickly and appropriately, but I'll get to that.
Monday
AM - 35 minutes easy barefoot on the track ~4.5 miles
PM - 60 minutes easy on the Fort-to-Fort Trail ~8 miles
Tuesday
PM - We had a good workout on the wet grass at McLeod Park. We had our usual 20 minute warmup and dynamic stretching and started our usual counter-clockwise loop around the soccer and softball fields. We went for 4x6min with the first two more at temp and the last two more at 10k pace. The rest was 2 mins between each. At the end we tacked on 2x3min of about 8k pace (maybe a tad faster). Towards the end my left hip-flexor was getting really tired from running counter-clockwise the whole time. We got in an easy 15 min cooldown to round it out. It was probably around 10-11 miles.
Wednesday
PM - semi-long run. I went out for 90 minutes at a casual pace. Ended up running with Mark a little along the way out and with Mihai for about 20 mins on the way back in. It turned out to be about 84 minutes to be more precise with about 11.5 miles logged.
Thursday
AM - easy 35 minutes barefoot on the track, ~4 miles
PM - easy 60 minutes Fort-to-Fort trail, ~8 miles
Friday
PM - We did some tempo work. My legs going in were fairly heavy. I had woken up this morning with a tendon on the bottom of my left foot inflamed. It loosened up shortly after getting up, but I could still feel it a little throughout the day, not really even a minor nuisance. But to play it safe I decided not to run in my Vibrams today and threw on an old pair of trainers. We went out to a loop that is about a mile long (1680 meters or so) and put in two sets of 20 minutes at marathon pace the first 10 and tempo pace the second 10. My legs were very heavy, but all in all I felt pretty good. Note, we ran this counter-clockwise, which we seem to do with everything. This particular trail has some fairly quick left turns in certain spots (especially when you're trying to ran at a decently fast pace), which may help explain the issues with my left leg. The rest in between the two was 5 minutes at a little slower than marathon pace (heart rate around 150-155). The total mileage today was probably upwards of 12 miles.
Saturday
I woke up with my foot hurting just a little more than Friday, but again it loosened up pretty quick. I was feeling it while running a little more though (yesterday I didn't feel it at all while running). Add to that my left glute was tight (I tried leg swings as well as lunges to loosen up and activate it) and that together with my foot problem my left IT band started bothering me about 30 minutes into the run. We turned around at about 37 minutes and I started going back. It was slowly, ever so slowly, getting tighter and more bothersome to the point I started slowing down and letting the guys go ahead. At about 60 minutes I decided it would be wise to walk the rest of the way back and not risk injury over an extra 20 minutes on a run. Today I'm feeling like that was a good choice as my IT band isn't an issue. My foot is still feeling inflamed and I'm going in to see the therapist tomorrow morning. I may need to take a few days and cross-train. We'll see. I probably put in about 8 miles of running before I started walking (and about 1.5 miles of walking!).
Total mileage: ~66 miles
Running Toward God,
Jason
