Tuesday - 10km Recovery

This week I made more of an effort to keep this recovery run as a recovery run. I should finish these kinds of runs feeling less sore than I was when I started, so I was trying to keep that in mind.

For all but the last 1500m of this run, I did keep an easy pace and only slightly increased my pace at the end on my own accord.

Wednesday - 10km 7km Easy

I had originally planned to do a 14km tempo run today. How ambitious I was, given the 35º heat.

Once I realised 14km was unreasonable to do in today's heat, I changed my plan for the week to do Friday's 10km easy run today, and 14km easy on Friday.

Even 10km today in the peak temperature was too much. I had to cut that down further to 7km at what was meant to be an easy pace but was a struggle the whole way through.

Cutting any run short, for whatever reason, is never an easy choice. I do think it was for the better in today's case though. I also noticed my legs were feeling unusually sore for this time of the week. While not enough reason on its own to justify shortening a run, the soreness paired with the heat made a compelling case.

I also want to make sure I'm really paying attention to how I feel because this week will be my first 6 day week of running. There's no point tiring myself out so much early in the week that all my other runs have to compromise too.

Thursday - 16km 11.5km 'Long'

Another disappointing run today. Was meant to be a mid-week long run of 16km, but I was not feeling good from the start.

This is more than just not feeling good though. I think my shin splints are getting much worse now, and may even be progressing to stress fractures. Frustrating to admit when I thought I had it under control until this week.

It's probably a smart idea now to give myself tomorrow off and see how I'm feeling on Saturday for my recovery run. I still want to get the 24km in on Sunday, so right now my priority is to make sure I'm feeling good enough to run that.

It's especially hard cutting runs short two days in a row. Hopefully it works out to be for the better. I'm far enough away from the marathon that I can afford to take a rest. Hopefully I won't have to reassess my goals, but only time will tell.

Time for some rest.

Sunday - 7km... Tempo?

I'm honestly not sure how to classify this run. My aim was to put about 6/10 perceived effort to test how my legs are feeling after two days of rest. It probably resembles a tempo run more than anything else.

After a visit to the physio on Friday, I've been told to take it much easier than I had planned for the rest of this week and next week, hence no recovery run yesterday and no 24km long run today. Depending on how I go next week, it might be wise for me to get an MRI to rule out (hopefully not confirm) whether I have stress fractures in my legs. Not exactly the news I want but I'm hoping I've caught it early enough.

I don't know if it's just a placebo, but I felt like I had lost some fitness from the much lower running volume this week. For the first time in a long time, I got a sudden and very painful cramp in the right side of my stomach. It hurt to stand up straight and every step felt like a knife was being driven further and further into my stomach. I was forced to take a pause until the pain eased.

By this point in the run I was already frustrated by the minimal improvement in my leg pain and the feeling of having lost fitness, so I decided to end the run with a 1km sprint.

Probably not the smartest choice for my recovery but it definitely felt good to let out some frutration. I guess it also reminded me that I do still have some speed in me, and not all my efforts until now have been wasted. I finished that final kilometre in 3 minutes and 39 seconds.

The hardest thing to do when looking back at a bad week is to find ways to celebrate the small wins and still acknowledge how far I have come until this point. It's so easy to be discouraged when a period of training does not go to plan.

I'd rather fail from aiming too high than to regret not giving my all.

I'll be reducing my load by about 30% for next week, and paying carefull attention to how I'm feeling.

I cannot wait to be back training at full intensity.

Weekly Summary:

Total Distance: 35.5km

18 Weeks Out.