Monday, April 2, 2012

Breakdown: Week 7 1/2 marathon training

Just when I thought I was right on track & living large...

Monday: Rest day. And that's freaking awesome. No crippling soreness & feeling all kinds of good about the long run the day before. I thought my week was going to be 'teh awesomesauce.'

Tuesday: All h*ll broke out at work. I was scheduled to run 3 easy miles & had a session with my trainer. However, neither of those things happened. I ended up going out to dinner with Mr. X & did some stress eating. Not a positive thing at all.

Wednesday: 5 miles on the schedule. I had to take BigDog to the vet at 7 PM, so I knew it was going to be a tough squeeze. I mounted the treadmill determined to get all 5 miles. I failed. For the first mile, everything hurt. I expected this; my warm up mile is usually pretty rough on me. The 2nd mile felt better, but not great. During the 3rd mile, I knew something was wrong. I hit Mile 4 & decided I'd had enough. Everything hurt. My calves, my right IT band, my left hip... everything was out of whack. It was also getting late & needed to get showered so I could make the vet appointment. Which I did... but then they were running late. Guess what that resulted in? Pizza for dinner. All told, my run was 4 miles @ 10:38 pace. Nothing overly spectacular. I decided to be grateful for those 4 miles & start fresh the following morning.

Thursday: I wanted to log 3-4 miles before work. I should've known it wouldn't be that easy. At 1.5 miles into the run, I was in pain. Not sore, not jiggly... honest-to-goodness pain. I hopped off at 2 miles with a 10:35 pace. I had to [literally] hobble around because the insides of my calves hurt so bad. My IT band was not happy with me, either. Later that evening, I decided to do some running as a warm up for my training session: 2 miles @ 10:38 pace. All I can say is the pain was more manageable. So I managed 4 miles for the day, though that probably wasn't a good thing. Then I did an hour of upper body weights with my trainer; it made me feel better & more productive than the running had. I started talking to female friends & found out it's [fairly] common for the muscles to be out-of-whack just before a cycle begins. I was hoping to blame it on that.

Friday: Rest day on the schedule. I took it. I was tired of feeling broken. We went to a friend's house for a social gathering in the evening... which means I ate even more food that wasn't good for me. In the category of "get my bicycle fixed, " I bought my sweet new Cannondale.

Who needs a Huffy?

Got a kick out of this!
Yes, I have a perfectly good Huffy I could've had repaired. But our PX hosted an event & I was able to speak to a bona fide Bike Tech about my wants/needs out of my bike. When I realized this bike would give me versatily & expansion capabilities, I had to have it. After lusting after it for about a month, I went ahead & purchased it. I plan to commute to work on it, too, once I get some splash guards.

Not to be left out, Mr. X got a new grill. Yes, I'm looking forward to genuinely grilled meats. It's a half-&-half, so we have a gas option & a charcoal option. Which is awesomesauce, right? Gas is great for the weekdays when we don't have a lot of time but still want grilled. But for slow cooking on the weekends, the charcoal side is going to be great!

Saturday: I was meant to run 9 miles. I didn't. I didn't trust my legs to sustain me & felt it was important to lay off. By that point, I wasn't sure if I was looking at an overuse injury or just had wonky muscles for a few days. Mr. X put the grill together, I tried to pimp my Canndondale (light kit was missing pieces), & we watched the newest Muppet movie (it was awful). In the evening, we attended a retirement dinner for a coworker. Yes, another night of dining out.

Sunday: My first day of hiking in Italy. It was coldcoldcold, which really caught me off guard. I'm not entirely convinced I was dressed appropriately for it. We loaded up our Camelbaks & headed to the mountain. And from now on, I will always believe my husband when he says, "we're going straight up the side of a mountain." Because we did! It was lovely, but I wanted gloves the entire time. I kept touching things. I'm not adverse to nature, but I don't like touching dirty things then touching my face to wipe the hair out of my eyes. Lesson learned: wear gloves. At the top of the mountain, our elevation profile was 795 feet... that's a lot of incline to walk! That's also how I realized I've probably got a touch of an overuse injury to my ankles/calves.
 
Top of the mountain!

There's a house built right next to this rock!






After the hike, we raced home, showered, & headed back out to see "The Hunger Games." Which was AWESOME! I was very happy with the adjustments the screenwriters (which includes the acutal author) had to make in order to make it a viable movie. Except for the whole "Girl on Fire" thing. I thought the dress was more dominatrix than it needed to be. The twirly dress was gorgeous, though. And weird point of interest: not once in the entire movie did I hear them use Effie Trinket's name. Strange, right? And yes, I ate Skittles & M&Ms. My 2 favorite movie items. Again, some really poor choices.

In summation, Week 7 really sucked. I was broken most of the weekend, missed a long run, & ate like total crap. It wasn't good. So I've started Week 8 fresh & ready to go. I'm hoping my legs/calves issues are resolved. I'll be trying them out Tuesday with an easy 3 mile run with a friend. As for the rest of it, I say starting fresh & letting the bad wash off is the best way to be. I've only got about one month until my first half marathon. So my goal for this week is to not let the guilt get me down. I'll do better today, NOT tomorrow.

2 comments:

  1. After reading this I made an executive decision. The boy and I are going to do more active things with our weekends. Just researched biking trails, hiking trails, etc. I'm all excited now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gotta say, hiking was cool... but when you're rolling with the Army, you MUST take their warnings seriously. In other words, climbing the mountain means actually climbing. Part of this is also helps to save $$$. Don't need to spend $$$ if you're out on a nice bike ride or hike. And even if you want refreshment afterwards, it won't cost nearly as much as a day in Venice or at the mall. Being active serves a lot of different functions. ;D I'm really looking forward to cycling. I keep staring at my bike. I want to commute to work on it, but I've got to get it rigged with lights in case I get stuck in the dark. So freaking excited.

    ReplyDelete