A little over a week out from Mooseman and I am finally acknowledging that I did not take my recovery seriously enough. The day after the race I was pleasantly sore, hobbling a bit, but getting up and down stairs and on and off the toilet without much difficulty at all :-) On day two I convinced myself that I would just take an easy spin on the trainer. Which ended up lasting an hour. And when I got out of work early I found myself at the pool, where I swam 2000 slow but comfortable yards. On day three, I felt like crap and wanted to sleep. But I got on the trainer again. Could hardly turn over the peddles. Seriously, like 2mph and 5-10rpm slower than the day before. Day four I went for a run. We'll call it a run, I'm not sure what it was. A shuffle? 9:30 pace and had a side stitch within a mile of starting. Lasted about 35 minutes then called it a day. I resolved not to run again til after the full week. Day five for whatever reason I thought it would be a good idea to ride for 2 hours. That was fine actually. Day six I went for a 90 minute hike. I was feeling very energized by the hike so was going to go to the Y and just bliss out on an arc trainer for a while. But when I got home from the hike my energy tanked and I didn't want to go anywhere. A few hours later I rallied and went to the Y for an hour. Day seven I met up with a friend and rode in the Concord area for an hour forty-five minutes. We had planned to swim but he doesn't have a wetsuit and it was 50s and raining. I tweaked something in my right shin (second time this has happened on a ride with him - I wonder what I change in my technique when we ride, or where we ride). We rode VERY slowly, yet it was kind of hard.
So Sunday afternoon I am sitting at home and realize, shit this is the end of my recovery week and I've put in 9 hours of training. That was dumb. That is not recovery. Last year I was so wrecked after FirmMan that it was clear that some serious recovery needed to happen. This time around my brain (ego?) thinks I'm ready to go. Its not going so well though. My energy is all over the place. I feel right at the edge of unraveling (more than is usual for me) over little things.
Over the weekend James decided he wanted to run a 5k. We looked for 2 weeks out but the better race is this weekend. So we both signed up. This meant that I needed to do my long run earlier in the week so I could do "speed work" on race day. So I went out for my long run this morning. Perfect running weather: 50s with drizzle. Flew out of the gate with 2 8:15 miles then blew up. Ran a few sub 9 minute miles but then fell apart further. Gave in and switched to a run/walk for the remainder. Every run I've had in the past 2 1/2 weeks has involved side stitches. I do not know what causes these (other than going too fast). I know its stupid to go out at an 8:15 pace on a long run where the planned overall pace in 8:40. And yet I do it time and time again. Its time to reign myself in. But its so hard for me to do. I want to be a better athlete than I am. Its hard for me to be where I am, who I am. I'm always looking for a plan to keep me busy and to distract myself from "not being there yet." The plans are good when they succeed in distracting me, but when my body doesn't cooperate the illusion kind of falls apart.
I'd love to have a positive wrap up on this one...but I'm drawing a blank.
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