After a tough run yesterday, today was much better. Yesterday I got to the gym about 6 PM after ditching work and taking a power nap of about 15 minutes. By Friday, I’m so damned tired that I need a nap just to stay awake later than 10:30. Anyway, I stretched and did my usual pre-run routine but within five minutes, the muscles on the outside of my leg, just above my ankles, began to hurt and then burn. They continued to burn throughout the run, which really made me mad. I thought I’d be able to run through it, since usually my calves hurt for the first few minutes of each run and then stop once they get nice and warmed up. But no, not this time. Those muscles killed me the entire time. And when I got to the point where I could walk for a minute, they just 10 times worse. It sucked.
I’m not sure what the problem was. I think maybe I was running too much on the outside of my foot because after the run, during my cool down, I made an effort to walk more on the middle of my foot and the muscles seemed to respond well to that. All in all, I was not happy with that run.
Today, I went to the gym around 1 PM. I stretched then walked my usual 5 minute warm up at a gradually increasing pace up to about 3.5 mph. Saturdays are my “long” run days, and will continue to be once I begin running in the mornings and outdoors. Today was no different. Instead of the usual 30 minutes, I jacked it up to all of 60 minutes. I kept the same formula, though (9 minutes running, 1 minute walking). And just like yesterday, I got to about the one mile mark and those same muscles started burning again! I started to get pissed off but then focused on assessing the problem and trying to fix it so as not to ruin my run. My novice opinion is that I was running with some tension in my legs in addition to running too far on the outside of my foot. The combination put too much stress on those muscles, making them hurt. I think this because at one point, I just tried and release all the tension in my legs and “just run”. I find that as I run, I build up tension in my shoulders and arms, which I have to be mindful to release. I think that was the case here in my legs as well. Once I did that and just ran and didn’t worry so much about my stride, etc, the pain started to subside. A few miles later, it was gone and I was feeling better and getting into a nice groove. The trick will be seeing if I can replicate that solution on Monday (my next running day; tomorrow is an off day with some biking).
Anyway, once I got that out of the way, I was able to focus on actually running. I finally broke the 5 mile barrier today (5.2 miles in total), which was very encouraging. No real problems, although I started to get tired after the 40 minute mark. However, I pressed on and only had to walk an extra 30 seconds on the final walking period. Other than that, I kept my speed of 5.3 mph (an improvement of 0.6 mph from where I began three weeks ago!) throughout the run. Overall I was very pleased.
Like I said, tomorrow is all about cross training with the stationary bike. Annie leaves for Rome on Wednesday, which will give me a month to concentrate on running and building a more effective cross training schedule involving some weight training. For now, the bike will have to do.
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