Inauspicious beginnings...
The thing about beginnings... is that you don't always get to choose when they come around. Nor, do you always know what to do with them when they happen. That's the thing about beginnings.
This week contains a day that I've been waiting for for almost a whole year now. The first week where I only have to get ONE set of shots! The thing is, this isn't exactly the way it was supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to be after my body's been completely worn down by stress and sleep deprivation, when my stomach's been revolting against digestion, when my ankle's suddenly taken a turn for the worse... because now, right NOW is when I have to focus on healing and rebuilding, not on increasing training volume. What the hell am I supposed to DO with an extra day?
After 10 months, its going to feel extraordinarily weird to have a morning without a run or a shot.
Sunday 10/12: 1:36:30, California to RB to JPL yellow gate. This was one of the worst runs of my life. I developed severe gastrointestinal distress about 20 minutes in and never recovered. It was more of a desperate trek from bathroom to bathroom, with every ounce of concentration devoted to staying upright, and not collapsing by the side of the road. I don't really remember anything about the running part. I can't believe I ran over an hour in this state... or that I continued to run after the first wave of cramps and nausea.
Monday 10/13: Off, shots. Don't remember much about this day. I think I felt poorly and was grouchy.
Tuesday 10/14: 1:21:33, Bailey to Connector. 28:46 to camp, 48:00 to sign. L ankle's been bugging me a lot, and still wasn't feeling great, but I had to seize the day and do a run I was excited about, because I knew I was losing tomorrow's run to work. Was glad I did. For some reason they didn't open the parking lot to the trail head today, so I had to climb over the fence on my way in and my way out. It turned out to be pretty nice though, because I pretty much had the whole trail to myself, save for one old lady who somehow sneaked in too. It was a really nice morning, and this run felt really inordinately easy. I was kind of disappointed with the total runtime, but I think I'm getting there. This was the most relaxed I've ever felt on this route, so much so that I was mildly disappointed that I didn't bring my HR monitor this time. The one bad thing was that I had significant pain in L ankle for the first 15 minutes or so... not sure how that is going to develop.
Wednesday 10/15: Off, work... early morning training session, partially compensated by a really delicious pumpkin bagel. L ankle still bugging me. Meh.
Thursday 10/16: 1:15:03, an excessively slow California to RB perimeter loop. Felt pretty tired and crappy today. L ankle hurt a bit less than the past few days, but it still bugged me a little. Still not getting enough sleep to recover, been feeling really worn out most days for the past few weeks. Feeling kind of barfy now after eating too much free leftovers for dinner at the office.
Friday 10/17: 45:01, Monterrey Recovery Loop. The first Friday run, maybe the only one for a while to come, but today was to make up for Wednesday. Felt pretty good today. Actually, I didn't feel that great... but this is part of the phenomena where if you're expecting "extremely crappy" and you get "kind of okay", then it feels like the best thing in the world. Picked up the pace a little bit towards the end, I think I needed to prove to myself that the fitness that I painstakingly raised from the dead over the past year is maybe just buried or dormant, instead of renewedly stone cold dead.
Saturday 10/18: 1:11:14, 4 mile sub-tempo on the track in 28:59 (7:19, 7:22, 7:14, 7:04). Spent the AM attending SCIAC multi-duals, so ran in the evening. Legs felt really bad all day... but couldn't really figure out if it was from anything that I did, or just extended sleep deprivation causing my entire being to feel really bad. Legs felt like they were already dragging on the warm up (7 laps on North field), so I decided to approach this more like a hard base run, rather than to try to hit threshold.
Given how awful I felt going in, I was pretty happy with the result. The first two miles felt really easy, so I had at that point planned on keeping that intensity and doing 5 miles, but after 9 laps my legs had other ideas. I'm still not sure what causes this, but sometimes my legs will shift gears seemingly independently of my brain... but it just felt like the pace they wanted to go, and forcing them to slow back down seemed really unnatural. Anyways, so it was 4 instead of 5 but with a really nice pick up over the last 2 miles. Felt a lot stronger than when I started out. 7 laps on the North field as a cooldown felt infinitely better than my warm up laps.
Training this week: 6:09:21, this didn't feel like a solid week, but I guess the minutes add up
Goals: Not to let this ankle thing turn into a chronic injury
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