Tough Training

Monday, for whatever reason, I just felt like crap.  No training.

The first training run after a marathon, whether I wait a day or not, is always rough.  I guess I'm just rusty and need to shake it out.  If I go for a quick run the day after a marathon and wimp out in the first two miles, I'll run much better the next day than if I just took the day off entirely.  That makes me wish more marathons were on Saturday, so on Sunday I could do a long bike ride for recovery (somehow, biking in weird circumstances is much easier for me), and I'd be right as rain on Monday, starting a new week fresh.

So this Tuesday, not having run on Monday, I started out rough.  Normally I do my tough hill repeats training n Tuesdays (14 miles and a crapton of hills, basically my hardest training run), but wisely decided to make it more like a normal training run, "only" 12 miles and a lot less climbing.  I probably stopped about four or five times in the first few miles, those random pauses I sometimes have despite not being tired or out-of-breath.  My joints felt tight and sore.  But I just toughed it out and kept going.  After a while, I felt a lot better.  Joints loosened up and I apparently got my head together too.

At the end of the run, I only had an average time (at best), but the second half of the run was pretty solid.  I need to get better at pushing through the tough times like that.

Wednesday's run might've been OK like that, but I just had a late start going that morning, and honestly didn't have enough time before work to finish the run.  That and I just felt weak.  Intending to do that long hill repeats run, I cut it down to only eight miles.  Not a bad training run, but I was pretty slow, and I just nixed the best training run of the week.  For the rest of the day, that left arch I tweaked last week was hurting.  That's not a good sign.