This week was 58 miles of running, 9 "miles" of pool-running, and 2000 yards of swimming -- training log is here.
This week was jumbled. No Tuesday workout because I raced the Richmond Half-Marathon on the previous Saturday. Wednesday I fully intended to run, but had a last minute change of plans.
To explain, I had a very early (6:30 am) follow-up appointment with my prolotherapy doctor that morning. I metroed out to his office in Tysons with the intention of running home after the appointment (about 10 miles).
[The background for why I was seeing this doctor: I have loose ligaments in my back (SI joint) and ankles that stretch out over time. As those ligaments loosen, I get more unstable/hypermobile, and start to develop compensation injuries.
So...when those ligaments get too lax, I get a prolotherapy injection to tighten them up. The injection itself is just sugar water ("dextrose" if you want to sound fancy) plus a bit of lidocaine to numb out the pain of the injection. The sugar water irritates the tissues and stimulates growth, and the ligaments tighten up and I'm good for another 18 months or so.]
At my appointment, the doctor agreed with my assessment that I needed another round of injections in my right SI, which was getting wobbly. The good news was that he had time that morning to do the injections if I wanted, so I didn't have to come back. So I changed into a hospital gown and had my SI joint and inner groin injected (I'd been developing a bit of tendonitis in my right adductor as a result of the floppy SI joint, so we decided to jab that spot also to be complete).
The downside of being injected was that I couldn't run for the rest of the day, so that was an unscheduled day off. The next day I was cleared to run, and to do my normal mileage.
With prolotherapy, I'm allowed and even strongly encouraged to return to my regular routine after the first 24 hours, with one exception - I can't go in the pool for 48 hours post-injection. Which meant that I had to run outside in lieu of my normal pool-running day on Thursday.
That was unfortunate, because I would have much preferred to have been in the pool on Thursday. The forecast was for sleet and wind - not terribly fun to run in.
As it turned out, the weatherpeople got it wrong. My run started in rain that turned to sleet, and then, surprisingly, to snow. And then the snow started sticking. By the end of the run, the sidewalks were covered in over an inch of unforecast snow. Hilarious in retrospect, but annoying at the time.
The snow meant that the track was unsafe on Friday - just a bit too much ice. So I relocated to the Whitehurst freeway for my first winter workout of the season there. GPS is unreliable there, so I used my Stryd foot pod to measure distance - identifying a nice loop of about .8 of a mile. I did 2 segments of 2.5 loops each, with 3:30 jogging recovery in between, and called it 2x2 miles.
By the weekend, everything was back to normal. Or heck, improved from normal, since the prolo was working its magic and everything was much improved.
Sunday was my last long run of the cycle - 16 with 6 at marathon pace. I ran it on a route that had some winding/rolling hills - the Mount Vernon trail between Alexandria and Roosevelt Island. I'm a rhythm runner, and so I find rolling hills to be challenging - they make it hard to lock into an effort. All of my marathon pace work this cycle has been on either the pancake that is Hains Point or on a steady downhill to cauterize the quads. CIM is rolling hills, and so it was good to get in a marathon pace workout on similar terrain.
As for how the workout went? Fairly well. I'm definitely still feeling Richmond in my legs, and I think I overcompensated by pushing the effort slightly too hard, to ambitious marathon effort (as opposed to realistic marathon effort). But I wasn't ever straining, and I don't think I dug a hole, so no harm no foul. Just a recognition that 6:43 is probably not my marathon pace in 2 weeks unless we get a tailwind.
In other news, I finally broke down and set up an Instagram. There are way too many (carefully posed, filtered, and even edited) pictures of runners on the internet, but there's no such thing as too many pictures of cats. Thus, I give you "wellImtryingtocat" - the running Instagram where all the workout log pictures are cats.
We'll see how long this lasts.
Dailies
Monday: Yoga and 9 "miles" pool-running. Massage in afternoon.
Tuesday: 8 miles easy (8:45), then upper body weights/core. Later did another 3 miles easy (8:21). Foam rolling at night.
Wednesday: Prolotherapy injections in the morning, foam rolling and yoga in the evening.
Thursday: 8 miles very easy (9:19), upper body weights/core, and then another 3 miles very easy (9:18). Foam rolling at night.
Friday: 10 miles, including approximately 2x2 miles in 13:01 and 12:24. Also injury prevention work and 1000 yards recovery swimming. Foam rolling at night.
Saturday: 10 miles very easy (8:54) and then drills and strides, followed by upper body weights/core.
Sunday: 16 miles, split as first 5 averaging 8:50, next 5 averaging 7:32, final 6 averaging 6:43. Also injury prevention work and 1000 yards recovery swimming. Foam rolling at night.
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