Some much needed rest
Last Wednesday’s tempo workout was not good. It wasn’t mental. If anything, I was as strong mentally during that workout as I’ve been. I knew I needed to hit it and was excited to do it.
About 15 minutes into the tempo (averaging about 6:07 until this point), we turned a sharp corner & all of a sudden I felt my legs losing ground. They turned over at a much slower rate, and I felt like I couldn’t make them go any faster. My pace slowed. I know this is not a good feeling… haven’t had it very often, but it’s not a good type of fatigue. Quads all of a sudden very heavy, slow, and unable to respond. It feels like the muscle cells are coated in a sticky, slow substance that doesn’t allow them to work. I felt it last week as well, but this week was worse. I stopped at about 16 minutes, and ended up packing it in early that night. Sort of felt like I was failing, actually.
Jerry and I had a good conversation that evening. We decided to take a few days easy/off (I actually took 2 days off after scaling the stairs at work on Thursday morning and feeling like I was trying to move bricks up the stairway). I started up again on Saturday with a long easy run, and 10 more easy miles on Sunday.
I’m going to go get my iron/ferritin checked, per Jerry’s suggestion. Maybe that’s part of it. I think it’s mostly due to mileage in general — just a little too much for too long. The rest week this month was 75 miles, and was also right before Ellie was hit. I think the combination of the stress of her accident & the fact that I’m not quite strong enough to have 75 miles/week be a recovery week definitely contributed.
I’m glad I listened to my body. The runs the last couple of days have been better. Not 100% yet, but I can at least think about picking it up a little now (previously, even the THOUGHT of changing paces made my brain cringe… odd feeling, anyone else experience that?). I’ll attempt another tempo run mid-week this week, and I’m praying that I’ve allowed enough recovery to be able to nail it. At this point, that’s my goal: recover enough so I can start hitting all of the hard workouts again. After all, mileage is good, but only if you can hit the hard stuff :).
P.S. As we were cleaning our office late in the week, I came across a friend’s training log who made the trials a few years ago. When I copied her logs, I remember being in awe: 80+ mile weeks were typical, some in the upper 90s. I was in awe of that and the harder workouts she was doing & the times she was hitting. I realized re-glancing through her logs how far I’ve come — my mileage isn’t too different from hers, and many of our reps are done at the same pace now! It made me realize how far I’ve come in this last year, and how strong I’ve become. You don’t realize it when you’re sludging through a workout plan with target paces, target mileage/etc (at least, I didn’t). Glad I have those as a reference point — a huge confidence booster!
