Perfect Recovery Run

When my body was beat up a couple weeks ago, a wise man told me, "always take off the day after a 20+ mile run."  So after 24 miles yesterday, of course I was back at it again today.  I would've actually taken his advice this time, but Mother Nature is throwing us another curve ball.  Ideally, I would've rested today and ran tomorrow again.  However, we might get a foot or more of snow tomorrow.  That meant I had to at least get some mileage in today.

The plan was to run a very easy 6 miles.  I think I can handle a run the day after a 24 mile run.  The issue becomes when I try to run 10 miles the next day and then 10 more the day after that and 10 more the day after that.  All those consecutive runs did me in a few weeks back.  Today, I was just planning to run my neighborhoods.

The weather was the same old thing.  It was below freezing.  I wore the regular attire, with the fleece vest.  I didn't take any pieces of clothing off this time, as I often do with my hat or gloves.

The legs were certainly sore at the start of this one.  Still, I felt better than I expected I would.  I was kind of concerned in the first half mile because my foot was acting up.  It came around though.  I begin with the loop around my neighborhood.

I had no plans as I headed into the other neighborhood.  I didn't have the desire to run the full big loop.  When I got out about a mile, I did another shorter mile loop.  I wasn't feeling terrible, but not great either.  I was just kind of grinding out the miles.

In this shorter loop, I came to a bus stop.  There were some attractive mothers there and that made for a nice distraction.  I focused on each upcoming mile to get by.  Getting through the halfway point was huge.

The legs slowly began to decline.  The quads got a bit more sore with each passing mile.  At least I can say they aren't totally shot.  That was surprising because this was the 6th straight day of running and I've been putting on a lot of mileage.

As I was heading back toward my house, I decided to take a cut through that I've never used.  That would put in some additional mileage.  I kept trying to run slower, but I ended up with quite a few miles right around 8 minute pace.  I saw a funny white (surrender) flag that someone put out in a snow bank ahead of this upcoming storm.

I arrived back at the elementary school with a little over a mile to go.  I ran a loop around there.  I finished up with a partial loop of my neighborhood as well.  The last mile was a bit challenging, but I survived.

In these last 6 days, I've now put in 77 miles.  That is a new record.  Today was a perfect amount of running.  It was short enough to get the legs working, but also not overdoing it either.  Now, the quads feel good and a rest day tomorrow should help even more. 

I'm at 50 miles for the week and I want to run 70 by the end of it.  That means 20 more miles over Friday and Saturday.  If I can handle it, I want to do a Valentine's Day 14 miler on Friday.  That might also depend on how cleared the trails and roads are.  I can't wait until this week is over, so I can start to taper.

6 miles - 49:53 (8:19 pace)