This week is a ‘down’ week. Having spent the last 4 weeks holding myself together through 135-140mile weeks, I get a week where I take the mileage down (~105) to consolidate the gains, as it were. Mentally and physically take a breather before picking up the mileage again a week later. The hope is that I’ll avoid mentally burning myself out and that the rest will avert any injuries that are sneaking up on me (and give the little niggles I’m carrying on the trails a time to heal).
So, I slept in Monday morning, and slept in Thursday morning… Thursday I even managed to get 10 hours worth of sleep which felt like an age. Whenever I fail to run in the mornings I feel like I’m slurring my way through to at least lunchtime. Just bouncing off the walls and looking through Perspex glass at the world. Not as bad as when I’m going through a big and tough week when (to steal from Fight Club) I feel like the volume is turned down on the rest of my life – waking up tired, going to bed exhausted. I stole that last line from a quote too… plagiarism is alive and well and living etc. blah de blah.
Track on Wednesday was alright. Didn’t push myself too much and did 5X1000’s. As per usual, just started with a couple of guys and watched as they pulled away from me. I should work harder to keep some sort of contact with them so that I get more from the workouts. Obligatory report card comment - Must do better. Because I only started adding track stuff this past summer, this was actually the first time I’ve ever run 1000’s. Quite a decent distance for a workout. Tough, and long enough that there’s a little pacing involved, but short enough that the end is upon you right after you’ve started. Right, well, that makes sense to me anyway.
Thursday morning slept in. Glorious it was. Ran a fairly solid 13 through Rock Creek and down past
12 this morning down through rock creek out on C&O and then up through Glover and cut across.
Pains? My right foot is bothering me more and more. A week or so ago it was a problem under the foot, and now it’s a problem on top of the foot. I’m concerned because I want to avoid the dreaded stress fracture – cause stress fracture = no running – but I landed funny on it a couple of times on the trail, and it’d didn’t send much pain around and about my system. More like a dull pain when running that comes and goes. I guess it’s just a tendon or muscle on top of the foot that probably just wants a bit of attention. I’ll just do my laces up a bit lose and think about it every now and again until it goes away (or something else worse replaces it).
No race this weekend. 22-23 long run tomorrow morning. Snowstorm on the weather forecast… at least it’ll feel like winter after such a mild January. Snow during the run? That’ll make it fun I guess. Oh, shut up.
