I feel like every training cycle I have a week like this, so maybe it was good to get it out of the way, but man, it just wore me down (and it was a down week in terms of mileage!). Humidity was through the roof all week, temperatures are climbing and I feel like I’m just not acclimated to the heat yet.
On top of that, had some pretty bad knee pain for a few days. Nothing that some extra stretching, icing and adjusting some sleeping positions didn’t fix, but certainly something I want to keep an eye on. I feel like I usually have some sort of minor injury during a training cycle, but usually it’s my IT Band, not my kneecap.
Part of what added to the injury is running on cement for sure. I’m still not quite ready to go back to the gym (I’d rather wait until a month or so after mask mandates are lifted, just to keep an eye on numbers), plus running outside is the only way to heat acclimate, so it’s better training for me (except on thunderstorm days) to run outside.
I’m really not sure what my goal should be for Miakonda. It’s my first in-person race after being vaccinated, but I choose it since teammates will be there and it has a small attendance cap, a nice way to ease back into races. I know that so much of how the day goes will be weather dependent. A bright, sunny day will end my running pretty quickly, especially with added heat and humidity, so I’ll have to do some goal setting the week/day of. On top of that, I don’t know if I should use this race to train for O24 (24 hours), Eagle Up (81 miles) or maybe see if I can instead PR my 100K.
Lots to think about and lots to plan, and at the same time, so much beyond my control. Either way though, halfway done!
- Monday: Rest.
- Tuesday: 2 miles. Planned on doing more, but as I was running (tiny loops), I saw the lightning and called it early. I don’t mess with lightning or ice!
- Wednesday: 10 miles. Back to the trail.
- Thursday: Unexpected rest day. Knee felt awful so I took an extra day off for more stretching and some icing. Seems to have done the trick and I’ve added a new stretch into my routine and modified another one. Running on cement (tiny loops) is certainly a factor though, I’ll certainly be aiming to get to the trail even more.
- Friday: 7 miles, tiny loops. Ran nice and slow and I cut out speed work this week to give my knee a bit of extra rest.
- Saturday: 21 miles.
- Sunday: 4 miles.
- Long run fuel: Tailwind, Bobo’s Bar, Gu.
- BWF/Core work: None specifically, will get back to it next week.
- Yoga: I didn’t have a chance to do a yoga class this week, hoping to get back to it!
- Stretching: I did my stretching routine after every run, and added in and modified some stretches to help with knee pain, which seemed to do the trick!
