9/9 'Recovery' Run

After last week's self induced unpleasantness I decided to be a little more sane, and kept my pace a bit lower (Long Run pace (9:04-10:04), tending towards Easy Run (9:04-9:34)) and to just run the much less hilly, albeit boring, out and back on 35th.

I probably should have run this more slowly, but it actually hurt more to run slowly. If I sped up to around 9:30 or so the feeling that someone was beating my shins with baseball bats subsided to a dull numbness that allowed me to get the mileage in.

I managed to catch almost every light that I could on this run, which was especially unpleasant as my calves would tighten back up, and then starting running would aggravate the shins until things worked themselves out again.

So all in all, a fairly unpleasant run. Good psychological training for the last 10K of the marathon I suppose. :|

What this has identified with some over thinking, is that the problem is not really the increased intensity, or mileage. It's lack of stretching and supporting training. I briefly considered that maybe I should switch to a cross training day after Tempo Tuesday to recover. Which isn't a horrible idea, necessarily, but it doesn't address the root cause of the problem.

Which as far as I can tell is classic shin splint issues, weak muscles in the front of the lower leg, and over tight muscles in the calf. Possibly combined with oddball form issues from poor core strength.

While I admit that going back to my workouts is a necessity, it's just not going to happen for a bit longer due to time constraints. But... I can use my foam roller twice a day again, and more importantly I can do front planks, which both work my core, and stretch my calves.

So, until I can get back to the gym regularly, and possibly beyond, I'm going to turn into one of 'those' people. The crazy workout/health people you work with. I've got an Outlook reminder every hour on the half hour. I'm going to do about 2 minutes total of SOMETHING. So far today it's been 1 minute front planks, followed by 20 pushups. Calves already feel looser. We'll see how long I can keep it up. :)


6.19 miles in 1:00:33 (9:46/mile) @ 143 bpm
(A little lower, first mile was 9:21, all others were between 9:40 and 10:04)