Mid-Week Training Update

While the first couple days of the week were great weather, it's now been raining here for the better part of 24 hours, with a 70% chance of rain all the way to the weekend. What better sort of weather in which to hunker down and update the training week quickly.

After taking Monday off, my upper leg felt much better by Tuesday evening, so I got a good 5 miler in without any trouble. No residual soreness or anything like that, which was good.

Wednesday I came home from work and changed but as I was walking out the door, I felt a few stray rain drops and decided to check the radar to see if the rain we were forecast to get was arriving in force. About 5 minutes after I went back inside, sure enough a downpour blew through and dumped rain for about 10 minutes before tapering off. The radar looked like I had a nice chunk of, if not clear weather, then just showers in which to get my 4 miles in, so I headed out.

That went according to plan for about 1.5 miles before sure enough the skies opened up again. At one point in my run, I could look west and see downtown Baltimore about 3 miles away. But when I got to that point, the buildings were already fading into the oncoming rain and within a few seconds, I couldn't see them at all. It was maybe 5 minutes after that the skies opened up and I got totally drenched.

But at that point, I was already soaked, so I just kept going and finished the run. It really didn't get too miserable (temps were in the high 60's with little wind) until I ran back across a busy overpass.  Then I had cars going past me at 40 mph.

I definitely ran the route a lot faster than normal, though, probably because of the weather, but I definitely felt the stress in my right leg afterward. A bit of the same discomfort in my upper leg, but also some warning pains in my lower leg that if I'm not careful, may become shin splints I fear.

So, given that it's windier and still raining today, I'm not totally heartbroken to take today off. I may go ahead and bag tomorrow too and then run Saturday just to be extra cautious, as shin splints can take a devilishly long time to heal. All the more evidence that I need to take it easier than I think I do in order to avoid injury while I continue to increase my mileage.