Friday, March 16, 2012

Week 14; The Best Laid Schemes O' Mice An' Men...

Sadly, my view the latter half of the week.

Saturday:  7 miles @ 9:56 pace, 6x hill sprints; Want to know what you shouldn't do before a run?  Eat a big bowl of pasta, follow that up with a bag of dried mango, and then head out the door shortly after.  My abdomen was a hot mess this entire run and I was constantly burping pasta and having those sort-of-puke-sort-of-burp moments.  Side-stitch Central and the only way I could keep going was to keep the pace super easy.  Which was what I had planned so a great run!

Sunday:  Bikram Yoga

Monday:  4.2 miles @ 9:43 pace; This should have been a slightly longer run but life got in the way a bit and I cut it short.  I was also feeling pretty sluggy and figured the extra couple of miles weren't really needed.  After all, I figured, tomorrow I'm doing 9 miles with speed (famous last words).

Tuesday:  7 miles @ 8:50 pace, including 4 miles @ MP-10 sec (8:12 pace); So this run was going great.  It was lightly raining which I love because it keeps the paths from getting too congested.  I had originally planned to do this run really early in the morning in order to make it to yoga before the day got busy.  I decided the extra sleep was more important this week and I'd just hit up yoga tomorrow (again, famous last words). The extra sleep was great and I'm finally on track with this Daylight Savings nonsense.  Then somewhere about 5 miles in, I twisted my left ankle.  I didn't drop to the ground like the last time this happened, but this also wasn't a roll you just shake off in a couple of strides, either.  I had to stop and walk it out for a few minutes.  It still hurt a little but I doggedly finished up the pick-up and then cut my 9 miler down to a 7 miler with one mile cool down home.

If that last sprain was a 10 on a 1-10 scale, I'd consider this one a 6 or 7.  Everyone today is telling me that the extra days off may actually be good for me, I'm not going to lose any fitness before the race, blah blah blah.  All I can say to that is if it were true, everyone would take the week before the marathon off.  And they don't.  So there.

Friday:  4 miles @ 9:26 pace; I debated whether I should have gone out for this run.  Physically, I knew it wouldn't make a difference for Sunday for my legs and endurance.  And if anything, it would set my ankle back.  Mentally, I needed this run so badly.  It took a while to find my ankle brace and associated accessories, but I had a really nice rainy, windy run.  If there's a silver lining on this extreme taper week, it's that my legs felt amazingly fresh.  My ankle is not 100% but so long as I don't roll it laterally again, I'm feeling optimistic it'll survive 26.2 on Sunday.

2 comments:

cliff said...

good luck!

i've eaten an entire bag (6 oz.) of honey bbq potato chips 30 mins before a speed workout. i couldn't stop! i did that twice, and wanted to vomit each time. wasn't fun.

Rachel said...

darn! sorry to hear about your ankle, but it sounds like it'll be ok. you've certainly had one hell of a training cycle and i'm predicting some amazing things on sunday : ) GOOD LUCK!!!