More of the same - just trying to accumulate more weeks of decent mileage and healthy running. I had a little bit of a blip this week when I rolled my right ankle (that's the bad one) halfway through Tuesday's hills. The ankle didn't hurt, so I kept going with the workout, but by Wednesday I noted that my peroneal muscle on the outside of my leg was tight, and my outer ankle was very sore to the touch. No pain while running, but the tightness and tenderness to the touch was concerning.
Got it dry needled on Wednesday, which helped some, but the ankle was still tender to the touch on Friday. I debated whether to do the workout on Friday - it was frankly very hard to convince myself to skip the workout when nothing hurt while running.
But....I've learned something through the years. For myself, injuries that pop up after workouts are frequently foreshadowed by a combination of a) something being really tender to the touch and b) me feeling very frazzled from stuff outside of running (i.e. life stress or a very heavy work week).
When you look at training load (and optimizing your balance of stress and recovery), you have to consider not just running stress, but life stress. Many of my worst injuries have been associated with periods where my job was in overdrive, and I've heard the same from others. When life is stressful, you don't recover and heal as well as you should, and minor tweaks are more likely to blow.
This week, work had been really stressful. It was a hard call, but I decided that I had two red flags here (feeling frazzled and the sore-to-the-touch ankle), and I'd feel really stupid if I ignored them and ended up injured after Friday's tempo. Especially when my whole goal for this summer is not to get super fit, but just to stay healthy and build a solid base. So, I sat out the workout (knowing that I could be helpful by timing my teammates and cheering them on made it a bit easier), opting for easy running and then some hard swimming to get my heart rate up.
Was it the right decision? No way to know for certain, but I had good runs on Saturday and Sunday, and the tenderness of the ankle is just about gone. Much preferable to another weekly report that starts off "yup, I'm injured. Again."
Dailies
Monday: In the morning, 2000 yards of easy swimming and a yoga class, also did some quick injury prevention
work and upper body strengthwork. Foam
rolling at night.
Tuesday: In the morning, 10.5
miles, including a workout of 7 hill repeats - nonstop circuit of up a hill for about 2 minutes, a 90 second easy
jog, a stride, and then some more easy jogging to the bottom (whole
circuit takes ~5 minutes). Followed with some injury prevention/leg strengthening work and 1500 yards of easy
swimming.
Foam rolling at night.
Wednesday: In the morning, 5
miles very easy (9:03 pace), a yoga class,and then another 5.5 mile very easy (8:43). Later swam 1000 yards easy. Dry needling in the afternoon. Foam rolling at night.
Thursday: In the morning, 3
miles very easy (8:43) to yoga, and then 3 miles back home (8:34) plus a bit of upper body/injury prevention work . Foam rolling at night.
Friday: 3.5 miles very easy (9:24), then timed my team's workout, followed by another 6.5 very easy (8:42). Followed with 1900 yards of swimming, including a swimming workout of descending 8x100 on 2:00 (splits were: 1:43.50, 1:44.22, 1:43.14, 1:43.81, 1:42.17, 1:40.45, 1:38,84, 1:37.24) followed by 8x50 on 1:00 (splits were: 50.31, 49.42, 49.60, 49.37, 49.34, 49.52, 49.37, 49.47). Foam rolling in the afternoon.
Saturday: 11 miles easy (8:18); later did some upper
body and injury prevention work. Foam
rolling in afternoon.
Sunday: 14 miles
progression (7:39 pace average, split as 8:38 for first 1.5 miles, next 7.5 at 7:46, last 5 at 7:12 - yup, was way too fast for the first third of this - I'll have be more disciplined next time). Followed with a yoga class and a very easy 600 yards in the pool. Foam
rolling in the evening
Smart choices.
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