Every Other Day

My achilles can handle the stress of running every other day. As I told Nate, “I can get somewhere on every other day”. (said with a huge grin on my face) (vs. my previous weeks where there where sporadic test runs of less than 8 miles) SO EXCITED to be healing!

But, as Steve warns, I need to be carefull with how fast I ramp things up. I tried 2 consecutive days of running last week, which wasn’t good. Walking in general hurt after that and I knew I had pushed too far. But, my achilles seems to handle every other day just fine, and that’s something I can totally work with.

Recap of this week:
Monday: cross training

Tuesday: 12.75 miles, as blogged about earlier this week. My first hard workout “back”, and was surprised at how I was able to hold paces. Yes!!

Wed: 8 miles easy. Very sore in the evening, and knew I had pushed it too far. I also noticed the tendon now “squeaks”, which I was a little freaked out about. This can’t be a good thing…

Thurs: Day off. I realized that it had been 3 weeks since the injury without a day off. Went in for a 4th sterioid patch, after meeting with Dr. Bahl and my PT. They said that the squeaking doesn’t mean that it’s any worse, just different. There’s nothing more aggressive we can do (cortizone shot = not a good idea in this tendon because it has the tendency to weaken the tendon). Good to know, I guess… I do feel like it’s more of the typical achilles symptoms, where it’s noisy, stiff after waking up, just tight during runs (vs. pain in a specific spot).

Friday: 8.25 miles with Nate. Actually felt great! Started with the goal of running 4-7, but felt good so kept adding miles. A rest day for the achilles does wonders.

Saturday: cross trained, 1:50 on elliptical (I’m impressed with my abillity to deal with the boredom of cross-training! I “only” went 1:50 because the Carleton gym was closing at noon, boo) Started sleeping with a homemade achilles brace so the ankle is at a 90 degree angle.

Sunday: A little over 16 miles. 3 miles at T, 2 miles at T, then 1 (modified down by Jerry). 3 miles in 18:03 (6:01 pace), 2 miles in 11:55 (5:57ish), 1 mile in 5:46. Lungs/legs don’t remember tempo pace as well. Need to do some extra work at this pace. BUT, I am pumped that my body seemed to remember the pace as the workout went along (helped that I only had to hold the pace for fewer miles each repeat!). The last mile I actually felt strong, efficient, and didn’t feel like I was working too out of the “tempo” comfort zone. Yeah!! Rounded it out with a longer cool-down, where I could feel that my hamstrings and glutes aren’t used to mileage like that. Hmm… hopefully they strengthen up soon!!

Total week: ~10 hours, 45 miles. The lowest number of training hours since I was injured: partly because I took a day off, but partly due to me losing motivation this week (skipped a couple of PM workouts 🙁 )

So — in sum, this week was a great confidence booster. I’m pumped to actually be able to log mileage, even though it’s sporadic (a fellow Olympic Trials blogger who dealt with this struggled to run more than 8 miles during a run 7 weeks out from injury… I’m at 3.5 weeks and logged ~40 miles/week). As I told Nate, I can get somewhere on this frequency/mileage. The dream of racing as fast as possible at the Trials isn’t lost!! Let’s go!! (but let’s also be careful 🙂 )