Hanging in there...
I've resisted all of the office chocolate for a whole week now. I'm eating healthy. I could do better with getting regular amounts of sleep, but I'm working on it. Overall these are good signs, bc it means I still feel hope for my athletic future. When that starts to fade, I go into binge candy eating, wallowing in self pity mode. Not going to do that anymore. Now, if only I could be as disciplined about taking steps towards a career path that I want... *big sigh*
Sunday 05/11: 1:14:34, Foothills of El Dorado - A Running Adventure. Peter found some trails of "moderate" difficulty for my long run near Boulder, but ofcourse he didn't bring the book, and so when I got to the trail head, there were 3 different choices to get to the "rolling" hills part... little did I know at that point that one was moderately hard, one was hard and one was... kind of like rock climbing. Naturally I selected the steepest one, but after about 6 minutes of steep climbing, I decided that stopping to pick one's way over large rocks every 2 feet wasn't exactly good cardio. Turned back and then selected the second steepest route, which was still plenty challenging. It was really tough to climb in altitude, but since I'd already passed about 25 hikers, I absolutely couldn't turn back for the easiest route and be a huge loser.
After about 23 minutes of uphill slogging, the path became the promised rolling terrain in the scenic foothills. Really beautiful, I'd forgotten how extremely awesome it is to run somewhere for the first time and not know what happens next. I just really wished that I could go as far as I felt like, and not have to stop at the "and then after this I think my foot will start hurting" point. Ran a little over 40 minutes out to a nice crooked pine tree surrounded by wildflowers, then back, taking the easiest way back down, which turned out to be great bc it provided me with 12-15 minutes of uninterrupted practice in running downhill fast on a soft gravelly surface. Felt like flying, was happy that I had quick turnover even after all of that uphill. Overall, felt like a strong run, the difficulty was mostly in the altitude, I was happy with the way my legs responded to the variety of terrain.
Monday 05/12: Off, shots, traveling. Woke up with cramping and soreness in L quad. Crikey, I guess I've gotten all de-conditioned to handle those mountain hill climbs. Also had adverse reaction to last set of shots, due to high pollen count. Feeling crappy even with the half dosage. Man, this is all very bad news bears.
Tuesday 05/13: 45:03, 10 x 100m striders, karoakes, quicksteps. Same as last week, except slower and worse. Soreness is less than yesterday but just couldn't get any quick turnover bc legs were just dead and heavy still. In hindsight I should have switched the tuesday and wednesday workouts, but I guess I'm never quite ready to accept how tired my legs are until I'm actually trying to run fast and its not working.
Wednesday 05/14: 46:22, Monterrey to bridge... Oooof. Upper L leg was really really tight and crampy this morning. Jogged real slow the whole way trying to warm and loosen up the muscles. Was not fun. Also crew removing trees along the trail, made it hard to get through. Also lots of dust and stuff in the air. Allergies really bad this week. Hopefully this was all worth it to get my leg to gradually loosen up... feels alright now, I guess we'll see tomorrow!
Thursday 05/15: 36:11, Yikes... cut a run short due to exhaustion, foot and knee pain and allergy badness. I swear that the thing I am singly most allergic to are those damn little yellow flowers that grow by the gazillions right by the California entrance to the Arroyo and all along the Arroyo Tempo Loop. You can SMELL the pollen in the air. And trust me, I smell very few things as it is. As soon as I enter this area, I can almost feel my throat closing up, its just horrible, horrible, horrible. I've noticed though, that every so often the city workers come and mow down all of the weeds along the trails, getting rid of the flowers and leaving this nice soft hay instead... I think I'm going to wait for them to come to this area of the Arroyo before I do any more tempo loops.
Friday 05/16: Off, shots. Iced and stretched R knee a lot. For some reason I feel extra exhausted and bad this week, more systemically than anything in particular. Like how I can't get out of bed even after 8 hours of sleep, and how it constantly feels like my head is stuffed full of cotton balls.
Saturday 05/17: 40:35, a cautionary tale: the punishment for eating too many pieces of greasy chicken yesterday was a horrible stomachache that kept me up most of the night, and the punishment for not waking up at 6 am due to resulting sleep deprivation was to do my nascent steady state run in the 90+ degree heat. So kids, the moral of the story is, make good choices for your body.
It was 93 when I started and 96 when I finished, but I held it together and survived. Jogged a little at the track, did a 2 mile sort of mini-steady state run (7:33, 7:27) and then jogged some more. I love the track so much. Not even the heat, or the painful sensation of hot dry air passing over a cracking and raspy throat could take away the pure, simple, focused joy of running around the track at a pace faster than trundling. While the air felt kind of like sandpaper on each inhale, and I really wasn't going very fast at all... I felt good about this run, if only because I felt that I forced myself to deal with the heat (which I usually go to great lengths to avoid), and didn't completely fall apart.
No goals again this week... I don't think I'm going to set capacity goals until I establish a baseline of what I can productively handle.
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