Life Ain't a Track Meet, It's a Marathon

Ice cube was never wiser. The past weeks of running and training have shown me that I had enough speed to push each workout, but I simply didn't have the endurance to keep it up. I was running a track meet, not a marathon.

I've increased my weeks' mileage quite substantially, especially when I think back to early July and my 20km weeks. The last 7 days saw me crank out 56km in total, something that is altogether new for me and though I am moving ahead with some caution, I don't think I'm truly prepared for it all.  I'm just still a little too gung-ho, especially at practices, so I've decided to take it down a notch and my return to the hill of hell tonight was a perfect example of just that.

Instead of demolishing my quads again I listened to my legs and I let them dictate my pace.  Once the hills were done I had a 2x8 minute tempo sessions to crank out and I managed to get the legs moving at 4:10 pace and it felt GOOD!  Since my 10km road race just over a week ago, the increase in mileage and that brutal hill workout; I have had a really hard time getting back to sub 4:20 pace (which was my race pace in the 10km). So tonight was good, except for a few things:

• I need to start eating less food prior to running. hummus and bruschetta 60 minutes before the workout is just too close.
• I need to stop rolling my fucking ankles. Seriously. Anyone have any great stability exercises they can recommend?
• I need to sort out what is going on with my left leg. My stride is still a little off and recent changes have taken away the knee and heel pain I had, but now I'm left with some achilles soreness.

So now I'm taking 2 full days off of running, I just had my first 3 consecutive running day spurt, and my legs are telling me that is enough. That and the rolled ankle. So for now I will pamper my legs with stretching, relaxing, massaging, icing and some cycling. Till next time!