Week in Review:
70 Miles | 1 day off | 7 runs | 2 lift sessions | 2 strides sessions
12.7M with 5 x 1600m at 555 - 535 with 40s rest, adding 10s per interval
17M with 4M-3M-2M-1M with 1/2M jog at 612-600-547-541 for each set
11M MLR
Given that last Sunday my knee was swollen, I wasn’t even sure what this week would look like. I took Monday off to be cautious (and smart) and ran easy on Tuesday with Jenna. By some small miracle (and Jenna’s work on my quad Monday night), the swelling went down before the week even started. My quads and IT band, however, were still very tight and Jenna recommended that I avoid hills for a while.
Terry dramatically reduced the volume for my mid-week workout so that if anything was still messed up, I wouldn’t risk taking one step forward to take five steps backwards. It was super fun to only have 5 mile repeats and to not have to run them that fast. While I kind of wished that I could have done the workout with PDC on Tuesday night, it would have been a stupid move, so I didn’t.
To be safe, I also set up an appointment at SMI to get ART with Jenna on Friday. This was super beneficial, and extremely painful in a much needed way. When issues come up, getting soft tissue work is always the first action I take because, for my particular history of tendinitis injuries, it’s proven to have the most immediate impact.
With the legs operational, I was given a green light to do the Saturday workout, with an option of a 10-12M marathon paced tempo, or 4M-3M-2M-1M. I wanted to do the repeats because I knew it would maximize the number of people who could join for the effort. This is a bit different than what I’ve done in the past - I always do a marathon tempo 2 weeks out - but I decided to try something new.
On a beautiful Saturday morning, we kicked off the first 4M portion of the workout with Jenna, Jay, Brent, Tom, Hannah and Victoria. With such a huge crew, I pretended like it was the trials race in 14 days and that I was surrounded by my fellow competitors. Ironically, I think that come race day, I will pretend that some tall, blonde girl next to me is Jenna and that another brunette is Victoria or Hannah. These sort of mental strategies help me feel comfort in the middle of the marathon. But I digress.
After this first rep, several people continued easy, so Tom, Brent, Victoria, Jay and I finished the rest of the workout. I felt really strong and controlled throughout, but could definitely feel my quads working. I was super grateful for Brent and Jay as they paced me through each repeat.
And with that long run, it’s officially now time to taper. I’m really hopeful that the next few weeks of reduced mileage and intensity, combined with more deep tissue massages, will help my quads and IT band feel a little bit looser.
See you soon Atlanta.