Same Time, Same Channel

No run today.

I felt fine on my run on Saturday and even afterwards for most of the day. In fact, as you may recall, I was complaining about having an easy week this week. What fools we mortals be.

On Saturday evening I developed a pain in the outside of my right leg a few inches above my ankle. It hurts when I put weight on it, not terrible pain, but enough to make me limp. It's only gotten worse since then. I'm worried about it.

No run again today. However, my leg feels somewhat improved. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to run in another day or two.

It's a shame that I can't run today. We are having unseasonably warm temperatures, and I can see a beautiful sunrise out my bedroom window right now.

Easy run. Average pace: 10:25.

Hooray! I was able to get out and run today. My leg felt fine in terms of the pain I've been having the last few days. However, I felt generally sluggish. It's interesting to me that I would feel sluggish, rather than fresh, after 3 days of rest. I suspect I'll feel better tomorrow because of having done an easy run today.

I'm glad that I've got an easy week in my training schedule this week. It makes it easy for me to cut back even more and really take it easy. I don't feel like I'm missing any key workouts.

I just watched a small thing that did my heart good. My two youngest (a 6th grade boy and a 1st grade girl) go to the same elementary school and ride the bus together. I sent the girl out the door first this morning because the boy was still getting his stuff together. After the boy went out the door, I went upstairs and watched them through a window (I can see the bus stop from there). My daughter was standing a ways away from the other kids at the bus stop, who are mostly 3rd-4th grade boys who stand there and throw rocks at a fence. She's probably smart to stay away from them. My son hadn't reached the bus stop yet. But when he did, he went and stood by his little sister until the bus came. I was just happy to see what appeared to be my big boy looking out for his little sister.

Easy run, sometimes bordering on moderate. Average pace: 9:54.

Weather at 5:30 am: 42°, 47% humidity, wind 5-10 mph SSE.

It was hard to get out of bed while it was still dark, but once I got outside I was happy to be out in the crisp pre-dawn air. My legs felt a lot fresher today than yesterday. That makes me wonder about taking a day off before my marathon, which is what my training plan says to do. Maybe it would be better to take the day or maybe two before that off, then just do a short, easy run the day before the race. Thoughts, anyone?

Easy +  (bordering on moderate) run. Average pace: 9:42.

Weather at 6:15 am: 22°F, 82% humidity, minimal wind.

I did a lot of cadence counting and thinking about cadence on my run this morning. During the first two miles, which I consider my warmup, my cadence was about 170-172. Later, when I was warmed up, it was around 176. My pace was faster with the 176 cadence, but wasn't really an increased level of effort since I was warmed up. However, I found that I hard a hard time increasing my cadence without increasing my pace. This lead me to some conclusions.

Pace is a product of cadence and stride length. If you're running at a given pace and you want to maintain that pace while increasing your cadence, you have to have a corresponding decrease in stride length. Theoretically, you could do this for any pace. However, I came to the conclusion that we each have a sort of minimal reasonable stride length. For certain slower paces, you would have to decrease your stride length beyond your minimal reasonable stride length in order to increase your cadence to 180. I think the minimal reasonable stride length can vary from person to person. So I guess my conclusion is that on an easy run, depending on your easy pace, it might not be reasonable to have a cadence of 180 because that would require your stide length to be shorter than you can comfortably maintain.

On a different (but possibly related) topic, my easy pace was faster yesterday and today than it has been recently. I guess that's what 3 consecutive rest days will do for you.

Bonnie said yesterday that she thought I can run my upcoming half marathon in 1:50. I appreciate the compliment, and it gives me something to shoot for. But that would be an average pace of 8:24. I wonder if I could do it. I've got to figure out a pacing strategy for the half marathon.

Time trial. 2 miles, easy 6.2 miles at 10K pace. Average pace: 8:36.

Splits: 9:53, 9:54, 8:21, 8:26, 8:22, 7:55, 8:14, 7:48

Weather at 7 am: 16°F, 53% humidity, minimal wind.

It turns out I was supposed to do two more miles slow after the 10K portion, but that detail got lost in the transfer of the training plan from the book to my spreadsheet. Oh well. Maybe I'll get out this evening and do 2 miles easy.

I was trying to hit between 8:00 and 8:30 for the 10K portion. My overall time for the 10K portion was 50:46.

I felt sluggish when I ran on Wednesday, but I felt really strong on Thursday, Friday, and today. When I felt good on Thursday and Friday, I figured that it was just because of the three days of rest I had at the first of the week, and I'm sure that is part of it. But I was surprised to still feel good today after having run easy, but faster than usual, the last couple of days. So I started looking for other explanations for my feeling good. On Tuesday afternoon I had a conversation with a friend and we decided that I would start keeping a food journal and would email her the previous day's entries each day to keep me accountable (I want to lose about 10 pounds). So I have been eating really well since Tuesday evening and haven't had any sugary stuff except for one cup of chocolate milk each morning and one square of Dove dark chocolate one day. I think it's probably a combination of the rest and eating right that is making me feel so good. I'm not going to rest three days every week to duplicate this feeling, but it motivates me to keep eating right. I'll do that and we'll see if I keep feeling good.