Last week's DFMC group run (also on the hills) hit me hard. Late on Sunday and on Monday I felt like I'd played for the Pats and spent most of the day getting tackled over and over by the Ravens. With Monday as a rest day and Tuesday on the Arc trainer, I recovered somewhat but opted to take another rest day on Wednesday. Thursday I attended my second Crossroads run, and my first taking the T west to run the Newton Hills back to the pub. About half the group decided to get off a few stops early at Newton Centre and run approximately 6 miles back in tackling Heartbreak along the way. I decided to stay on the T with the rest of the group to run just under 9 back to the pub tacking all the hills except the 128 overpass. I started out with Steph and Jeff and could see them up ahead of me until a little ways after heartbreak. I definitely pushed the pace trying to keep up with them over the hills. Since I didn't run with my Fuel belt, I needed a water break at Marathon sports and lost sight of them soon thereafter. While it was a tough run I completed it in my goal time at slightly less than a 10:00 min / mile pace, in "marathon time" as Steph calls it (basically not stopping your watch at water stops since, the clock on Marathon Monday doesn't stop for water breaks, or nature calls).
Since there was a group run on Saturday morning and Thursdays run was a hard one for me I took Friday off. I was surprised how good I felt on Friday, nothing like I'd felt on Monday after the previous long run so I thought my body was finally adapting to the stress / recovery cycle. But alas, when I got up on Saturday morning to head out to Lexington my body screamed at me in protest, and with a little more than 13 weeks to go I listened to it and instead opted to hit the gym to Arc Train for 60 minutes instead of running the 10-12 miles planned.
Before heading to the gym, I also stopped by PR Running in Westborough to procure "The Stick" to add to my arsenal of weapons of self torture. I have not been using the foam roller on my IT Band as much as I should have been in recent weeks and now the knee area on both legs has gotten a little too tender to massage with the foam roller (body weight too much pressure right now). I'm also having soreness on the inside of both my thighs. I tried to think of ways to massage that area with the foam roller, but alas I'm not a contortionist so the stick seemed like a good investment.
Considering that I'm writing this with an ice pack strapped around my left knee, I probably should've taken Steph's advice and Arc Trained today as well, but instead not to let those fuel belt bottles I prepared Friday night go to waste, I chose to tackle the hills again for the second time this week in an out an back to Heartbreak. Again just under 9 miles, about the same distance as the Thursday run but I finished a few minutes faster (9:34 average pace) . . . and with negative splits to boot! A few disclaimers (1) Most likely my pace wasn't really that much faster than Thursday because I didn't take a non moving water break like Thursday because I wore my fuel belt, and (2) My negative split was most likely due to more downhill running on the second half of the run. Nevertheless, since I'm sore from the effort I'm going to pretend I conquered those hills.
On the fundraising front, donations from my mailing on Monday have started to roll in with contributions from Harrington Brothers Corp, Ahern Painting, and the Howard family. Thanks so much to everyone for the support. Fundraising total now stands at $1,500. Planning to stuff some more envelopes tonight in hopes of keeping up the momentum to support the Barr Program Investigators in finding new ways to kick cancer.
Now . . .off to find the ibuprofen and let my ice pack get cold again so I can muster the strength to tackle those hills again in 4 days for Shifter's Crossroads birthday run.
No comments:
Post a Comment