Eugene Half Taper Pt 1 (Eugene Half Week 7 of 8) Apr 15-21

ICYMI, on April 13, I made an arguably (smart? stupid?) choice to spend one of my days in Philadelphia driving 2+ hours to a local community 15K so I could get one more race experience in before Eugene. (Originally I was going to run the Prospect Park 10 Mile in Brooklyn on Sunday April 14, but my conference talk got moved and when I knew I wouldn't be able to make it back in time, I had to shift to a Saturday race.)

While the race itself was generally a good experience, the drive back was not kind to my knee. By the time I finished running, it was a bit stiff and achey, and then after three hours sitting in the car driving back, it was a bit swollen and not too happy with me putting weight on it. I had planned to run seven easy miles that Sunday the day after the race, but when I got up that morning I knew it was absolutely NOT happening.

Thus, the theme of week 7 became, "For the love of god, Angela, don't wreck your knee again." Thankfully, being just two weeks out from the race, all the work was already done, and as we recently learned, extra rest is almost always only going to help you.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5
Eugene Half Week 6

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 7 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 16 miles

🐌 Easy: 12.25 miles
🐎 Fast: 3.75 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 76.6% vs. 23.4%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Monday 4/15: Strength. By Monday my knee seemed to improve a bit, but it still hurt, and I *really* did not want to revisit the situation I found myself in last summer, where in the course of two days my knee went from "Ehh, feels a bit off but not too bad" to not being able to run at all for six weeks. Nothing hurt lifting, though, so I remained cautiously optimistic.

Also, frankly, I was just completely exhausted from the previous week and needed a bit of time both mentally and physically to do *nothing*. 

Tuesday 4/16: Rest. Better than Monday and no lingering pain from lifting.

Wednesday 4/17: Rest. My knee continued steadily improving, but I wasn't quite ready to test things. I also got a fun surprise Wednesday when this arrived in the mail:

I'll take "Things I did not see coming" for 500, Alex

Honestly, while I was super stoked to participate in the Masters Grand Prix last year, I spent most of it hobbling around injured and/or recovering from COVID so these race performances were very much NOT the races of my life. I was not expecting anything like this but it was kind of cool! (Please no one tell me how many 40-44 women were actually in the running, I'd rather not know. 🤣)

We considered participating again this year, but nearly all the races were moved to the East Coast, and it's just a lot of money and time to spend flying across the country and back for pretty short races (especially since I was already planning on traveling to Eugene).

Thursday 4/18: 6 easy. I got a massage Thursday morning, and with my massage therapist's blessing, took my knee out for a super easy spin. I thought if it was at all painful, I could keep it short, but it felt *almost* normal without any actual pain, so Friday morning I decided to see whether this week's long run workout was in the cards.

Friday 4/19: 2.5 warm up, 5 x 1200m @ 10K effort / 400m jog, 2.5 cool down = 10 total. We were leaving Friday afternoon to drive down to Paso Robles for the weekend with friends, so if I was going to get any running done that day, it would have to be in the morning. I was a bit tired and not super recovered, but my knee at least felt normal so I figured I would go to the track and just take it one bit at a time and quit if I needed to.

My quads and hips were still sore from lifting, but lo and behold I did manage to get through the whole thing, one repeat at a time. 10K pace felt harder than it should have but still doable, so I did it.

Saturday 4/20: Rest. And wine tasting with friends!

Sunday 4/21: 6-8 easy. This was the run I'd swapped with Friday, but I'd kind of forgotten what our schedule was for the day so there ended up not really being time (i.e. I would have had to do it before 7am or after 9pm, which, sorry, not happening). So I pushed it to Monday, no big deal.

🎧In my ears this week:🎧

• One of Us Is Dead by Jeneva Rose. A tale of backstabbing, deceit, and murder in an exclusive Atlanta suburb. Four women with more free time and money than anything else navigate divorce, status symbols, and social entanglements, while their local beautician-cum-social director Jenny (the sanest one of the bunch) desperately tries to hold her own life together. Someone, we know as the book opens, is dead, but we must make our way through flashbacks and Jenny's interviews with police to discern who and how and why. Yes, this is a murder mystery in a way, but it's also a little slapstick and funny, and an enjoyable palette cleanser after The Night Swim, which was excellent but dark AF.
• Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent. Lydia, her highly respected judge husband Andrew, and teenage son Laurence appear to have an idyllic life in the large and well-appointed house where Lydia grew up. But Lydia and Andrew have a secret–the accidental murder of a local girl, Annie Doyle. As Laurence begins to suspects something with his parents is not right, we cut back and forth between his story and that of Annie’s sister, who has never given up on figuring out what happened to her. Dark, but a tour de force and very much in the same vein as Strange Sally Diamond.
• The Hunter by Tana French. Follow-up to The Searcher from a few years back. Retired Chicago cop and expat Cal Hooper is settling into his quiet life in rural Ireland, mostly restoring furniture and being a stable adult presence of 15-year-old Trey (who he befriended a few years earlier in The Searcher). But when Trey's long-gone father reappears with a sketchy Brit looking for gold, Trey's desire for revenge for the death of her older brother (a major thread of The Searcher) is reignited, and it's all Cal can do to save her from herself without alienating her. HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE TANA FRENCH.