Monday, May 7, 2012

Keeping It Short

My recovery went fairly well after the 3.5 miles at night on Saturday.  The ice bath, foam roller and stretching were a big help.  Some soreness lingered into today, but it wasn't as bad as last week.

I decided to head out to Louise Moore Park and run an easy mile today.  I've been doing too much too soon, so I need to scale back.  The goal is to run shorter distances, but with more frequency.  I hope to get in at least three runs in this week, if not four.

Louise Moore is a nice and easy loop.  There aren't hills of any significance.  The trail is fairly soft and one loop is just under a mile in length.  It was cloudy and drizzling as I headed out, but the temperature was perfect.

Even though most of the soreness was gone, I still struggled early.  Because of my knee problems, I barely lifted my legs and my form was awkward.  It probably doesn't help to be running with such poor form.  The big issue with running such a short distance is that my legs are stiff through most of the run.  After about a mile, they came around on Saturday.  When I hit a mile today, I was done.

My legs weren't just sore, they never were sharp at all today.  Even when they stopped bothering me, they just had no pop.  I was kind of hoping to run the mile under 9 minutes, but I would've had to push too much to do so today.  Now is not the time to do that.  I need to proceed with caution.

The run did seem like it was over before it started.  My legs started getting sore on the ride home.  I bought an ice wrap product at the store today and that seems to be working good so far.  One of the big issues with my legs is that I can't find a way to stretch where it hurts.  When I've had IT band problems, I've been able to do that and that was a big help.

Tonight I'm going to a lacrosse game and tomorrow and Wednesday I'll be at the high school league track meets.  On Wednesday evening, I'll also be at the LVRR's first 5k of the Summer Series.  Since my photos were so well received from the half marathon, I figured I'd photograph that too.  All this will probably make it a little tough to recover.  I might even carry my ice wrap with me.

Tom created a facebook group today to start doing more night runs.  It is such a great idea.  I suggested running at Merrill Creek in New Jersey.  That's about a 5.5 mile loop around the lake.  It would be cool at night.  The big problem is that it is technically closed at night, so we'd have to get permission.  I'm trying to come up with routes that would create a loop.  That way people could stop at their cars to refuel after each loop or quit running altogether.  Then we wouldn't need as much support as we did the other night.  Regardless of how we do it, it should be fun.

I'm also strongly considering running the Freedom to Liberty run.  It's a four miler at the beginning of June.  It starts at Freedom HS and goes to Liberty HS.  I'm having exploratory surgery shortly after that and might be out of commission for awhile afterward, depending on what they find.  It will be fun to get my butt kicked by all the speedy high school runners too.  I like that running helps causes, but I'm especially fond of races that help out high school programs.

I'm hoping to get another short run done either Wednesday or Thursday.  It will be no more than a mile and a half.  My Saturday night run at NJMP will be no more than two miles.  I need to take it easy for awhile.  Once my body adapts, my progress should be rapid.  I just need to recover well enough to get more runs in each week.

1 mile - 9:42 (9:42 pace)

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