If We Could Just All Agree To Forget That 6/7 Of This Week Ever Happened...

So...sucky week? Awesome week?

Finally OVER so we can all MOVE THE HELL ON?

Grand Total: 23.2 miles

* 13 easy
* 4 speed / intervals
* 6.2 race

Monday 2/25:

• Lunch time - Yoga. Today our teacher gave us 3 bits of homework: 1) Don't rush. 2) Don't wait. 3) Don't "should" on yourself too much. Several of us mis-heard the third thing at first & much hilarity ensued.
• Afternoon - 4 miles easy. Normally Monday is my post-long run rest day, but since I had two days of rest in Paso & no long run, I threw in a few easy miles on the 'mill Monday between work & karate. This was when my week started to go downhill with stupid calf/Achilles pain. As I said on the dailymile, I am beginning to think I deserve a freaking medal for every run I completely on a treadmill. Sigh.

Mismatched sock reclamation. Running socks are too expensive to be
tossing out just because the logo is a different color, so these two have officially
become a pair. I'm just thrilled that I could help them find one another.

• Evening - Karate + easy strength work. My sensei during warm-ups: "Alright, Angela, lead us in some exotic & sadistic stomach exercises." I love it when people recognize my core competencies.

Tuesday 2/26: Speed / intervals - 2 warm up; 4 x (1200m @ 5K pace / 3:00 jog); 1 cool down. You can't see super-well, but that little sandwich board sign down there has become the bane of my existence as far as track workouts go.

NO TRACK FOR U!!

As I've said in the past, in no way do I begrudge children being active & playing sports. BUT I do have something against closing the track for events that don't use the track. I used to run at Sequoia High School during soccer games all the time and no one had a problem with it.

Warmed up in Kinvaras, ran the 1st three 1200s in the Universes (which I promise to properly review soon), then switched back to Kinvaras for the last one & a cool down mile. About 3 miles or so seems to be about my limit in them right now (but WOW, do I love how it feels to run in them!). Calf/Achilles felt better than Monday, but there were still some unhapppy twinges & the last couple of repeats were tougher than they should've been.

My office was throwing a baby shower for a colleague at lunch today so I skipped my usual lunch time strength stuff, which worked out, actually, with the 10K Saturday. (Not that the gym stuff is that exhausting -- it's just kind of cumulative over multiple days & weeks.)

Wednesday 2/27:

• Lunch time - Yoga instead of Pilates. Still wanted to do something active at lunch today, but also wanted to save the leg muscles for Hellyer. And more yoga is rarely a bad thing. I thought that if my legs were feeling good, I might do my usual 4 easy on the 'mill pre-karate, but the calves were feeling kind of dicey so I decided that in the best interest of having a good race Saturday to rest instead.
• Evening - Karate + some strength work.

Thursday 2/28: 6-8 easy. 4 "easy." I was feeling a little better Thursday leg-wise so figured I'd just start this run, see how it felt, & not push it too hard of my legs were all complain-ey again. Which they were. Quickly. All my running muscles just felt like they were too tired to do their jobs, so my bones & joints ended up taking most of the impact. I turned around at 2 & figured I was lucky to get the 4 I did.

Friday 3/1: 2 easy. Like I mentioned in the previous post, my right calf was really, really unhappy Friday morning & I just did not believe that the potential benefit of 2 easy shake-out miles outweighed the risk of making it worse & potentially being unable to run Saturday. (Honestly, I have never really done shake-out runs & usually rest the day before a race, but these little 2-3 mile jaunts are showing up on my schedule now so I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.)

Saturday 3/2: Hellyer 10K -- Race Report here.

(Spoiler: I finished, and I did not die, and it was not horrible, and my legs actually feel better now than they have all week. This is the 1/7 I'm willing to keep. :) )

Sunday 3/3: Rest. I won't lie; part of me was like, "Come on, it won't kill you to jog a few easy miles, get the mileage total up for the week..." Then I came to my senses and said NO. This week was what it was; take the rest day as scheduled, and set yourself up for success next week. Consistent, purposeful mileage = smart; mileage for the sake of mileage = not so smart.

So. Off to a rocky start this week, but with some redemption at the end. Next week I'm hoping that my calf will be feeling better & I can go back to doing all my runs as scheduled. We shall see.