Oh Everest, My Everest

Running in the rain is great!

Heartburn is not. I need to lay off those cheap calzones.

I just wish it had rained yesterday when I wore my last clean pieces of technical gear. Cotton is no fun when you're all wet. Although, yesterday's run was quite the success. I combined the speed workout with the baby long run because I stupidly took three days off in a row again. When will I learn?

I think I only did so well because I was pacing myself against a dude and he wasn't much faster than me... I'm not faster than anybody, much less a dude. Here was my chance, and I took it. I did a 100-meter sprint for every lap around the mall (just shy of 1km) from my third through sixth lap (actually, I did two in the fourth lap). Then the dude I was beating finished his run and my distraction disappeared, leaving me with my twitchy muscles, throbbing knees and burning feet. I eeked out two more "easy" laps before I pretty much just wanted to pull out a knife and slice out the tendons in my knees. (They needed the extra space.)

Not having a knife handy, I decided on one more sprint to distract me. The rest of lap nine was spent catching my breath and wrangling my heart back into my chest. That just left excruciating lap ten for me to do, during which it was easier to convince myself to just keep going at my average long run pace because I was "warming down."

I've been on NSAIDS since Saturday - the maximum dose of ibuprofen plus one overlapping dose of aspirin during a really bad night. I iced my knees three times on Saturday and then again after my run yesterday, and I should do it again now. My knees are starting to complain. I'm having old ladies at work tell me that the reason they can't walk to the next building is because they didn't take care of their knees when they were young and running like me. (Gee, thanks.) I'm gonna quit it with the NSAIDS tomorrow, though. If I wake up in a lot of pain again, the morning will be my last dose. If not, this is it. No more drugs until after the Saturday long run. But I'm hopeful I won't really need them again until I add more mileage. I have this week and next to get my body accustomed to ten miles. Lord help my knees when the following week comes.

Labels: baby long run tuesday, calzones, heartburn, knees, nsaids, rain, short run, sprints, violent urges

I felt terrible today - even worse than yesterday - but I made myself run. Ended up feeling pretty good after the first mile so I ran for an hour. Almost hit 5 miles. Worked a couple of short sprints in there and then got into the grass for some crunches and stretching. Usually it takes about five seconds of running (or more!) to get me ridiculous happy and pumped. I think my threshold is getting higher (or maybe these last two days at work have just been as sucky as I think they were). The almost-two miles I did yesterday actually left me feeling worse than I started. I think my new MO will be to run until I feel good and then do whatever more I can or have time for after that. That seems to work well for me.

Also, since I'm getting into higher distances and trying to increase the days I run, I think I'll let this be the beginning of Baby Long Run Tuesdays. Long Run Saturdays were the only ones in the schedule before and I'd just sort of run twice sometime in the middle of the week, whatever distance I felt like. Monday can be the random cadence day since I still feel like my cadence shouldn't be limited to so narrow a range. I guess that leaves Thursday for either a hill workout with one of those groups in the city or just another 3-mile easy run to fill out the weekly miles I need to equal the distance of the coming long run. Let's see how long this lasts.

Labels: baby long run tuesday, short run