AM: woke up, met jamie, and limped 2 blocks and decided to not make this worse. Walked home and am currently icing the hamstring tendon. Damn I hate injuries. This will keep me from getting to 80 miles this week. I have had this type of injury before, but not this bad. I really could only limp because it hurt to fully extent my right leg and it hurt to step on it extended or not. Jamie often says that if you can sprint without undue pain, you can run distance. Well I definitely could not sprint on this.
PM: 1hr on stationary bike. Its probably because I am so used to running but the bike is so hard, even at equivalent heart rates. I was spinning 90-100 at a resistance of only 5(whatever that means, but it wasnt much resistance) and had a heart rate of 120 but I felt like I was really working. I have often taken my hr at the end of a run or in the middle during a stretch break and I am usually around 130 for easy runs. But the running feels much much easier than the bike did. Anyway, I was just grateful that I could get a workout without hurting my leg worse. This will only be a few days. And I will stationary bike morning and evening when I can't run from now on now that I know it doesn't hurt the injury.
AM: 4.25 No 'pain' although some slight twinges that made me worry. But it got better as the run went on. Before it felt good for the first few strides and then suddenly felt like it was gonna pull off of the bone. So I think I am over the worst of it.
PM: 6.5 Even fewer twinges but still present. I felt fine going fast when I felt like it. Didn't do the planned striders just in case they would set it off again. I'll give it a few more days before I stop worrying.
AM: 5.2 Leg is getting worse, not better. Felt fine during run but afterwards I could feel it walking around again.
PM: 50min spin Decided to not risk it for today (not hitting my goal mileage anyway). I will think long and hard about whether to run tomorrow or not. If I do it will mean I think I can get my goal mileage in and then recover during my skiing trip the next week. The most prudent thing of course would be to cross train on the stationary bike this week, snow ski next week, and then get back to running fully healed. I need to be healthy when I get home because I don't have access to stuff like stationary bikes and the like to cross train on.
I figure that while I am injured, if I put in the same amount of time on the bike that I would have running had I been healthy at a similar HR (I don't run with a HRM but I have checked several times and it always falls 120-140) I will have lost the least amount feasable. I hate the bike and yet I notice how much faster my legs recover after a spin than after a run. Directly after a run my legs feel tired but okay and then for the next 5 hours/longer if im on high mileage. Directly after a spin my legs feel horrible but then 1-2hrs after they feel fine again. Funny. I guess it is because of the impact difference. One thing that never hurts me while running is my butt and that hurts at least the whole time I am biking if not after as well.
PM: 50 min spin I have started doing 5 min at a fairly easy resistance and then 5 min at a decent resistance and repeating to mix things up. It may sound too hard for base, but really the 'high' resistance I am doing only gets me up to 120-135 heart rate and the 'easy' resistance is usually 110-120. I am getting a lot of studying done despite it being hard to concentrate while exerting yourself. The thing is there are 0 distractions besides the discomfort.
Not too much longer of this. I will be on the bike through tuesday morning. Then I am flying to go skiing. So the next 3 days skiing will be my exercise and then Saturday will either be off or running followed by running 50 miles that next week with perhaps some supplemental indoor swimming or outdoor rowing (if my dad either lets me use his shell alone or wants to come along). Basically I don't want to go from 0 to 80 miles of pounding on my legs immediately. The following weeks will be 65 and 80 miles. Then it will already be time to go back to school, at which time I will add in speed workouts and maybe drop back to 65-75 miles per week.
Whoa I really mixed it up there. Basically I wasn't done studying the lecture I was on so I went another 10 min at an easy pace.
So that is 10 hours and 50 minutes of spinning this week. So at 8 min miles (which I have been going at least 8 min miles running recently) that puts me at 81.25 miles worth of aerobic work for the week. Not bad. It is all about consistency. I really want that sub 17 5k. It should have been mine already. It is difficult to get really excited about the mile because the 4:50 barrier (if anyone would call it that) is definitely going down. If I had run a race in good conditions with competition last spring it would have happened. But getting to another barrier beyond that is gonna be difficult. Only time will tell. I am doing the endurance work. I need some speed. Better than 62 sec 400 speed. That is pathetic.
Skiing 9:30-4pm but skiing isn't the great exercise I remember it as. Your quads burn occasionally, but especially having to wait on my dad no serious exercise is being done.
8 easy miles. Leg didn't quite feel right. Did some very light stretching afterwards and hoped for the best. I knew that if my leg wasn't ready for it now, I might have to take the whole season off.
PM: 5 Feel good, but I am realizing that the 2+ weeks definitely make it harder to do high mileage between the pounding and the weird stabalizing muscles I am not used to using anymore.
Drove down to the panhandle of florida but was able to get a late night run in. I am not meeting my 'goal' of 50 this week, but between coming back from injury and the holiday's I am not too sad. I doubt I could have kept up 80's or even 70's at home had I not been injured.
PM: 6 Meant to do 8, but just wasn't feeling good. I think I was trying to put my two runs too close together today and make them too long. I did the morning run at 11am and the afternoon run at 3pm so only really had 2 hours to rest/eat in between.
Driving back home my fam wanted to stop at this outlet shopping center in B'ham. That meant that I wasn't going to be able to run until really late. So after I got bored just looking around, I found a secluded stairway of 3 flights and decided to do repeat stair sprints. I probably did 10-12 plus some jogging/walking in between (all in jeans lol). When I got home my legs were really tired and I was really tired so I just went to bed.
