Week 3 Recap

Week 3 was considered a stepback in the mileage building process of my marathon plan. I ended up running 19.5 miles and swimming 3500 yards in a little over 6 hours worth of training. A slow week indeed.

On Wednesday I didn't wake early enough to run in the morning so I decided after swimming that evening I'd face my running archenemy, the gym treadmill. With only three easy miles to run I figured it would be an in-and-out battle and then I'd be back at home to eat dinner at a reasonable hour. I wasn't expecting to be painfully cut short. I'm toying with three ideas of why I always hurt while running on a treadmill. Perhaps its a combination of these:

1) I change my stride because there's a display in front of me.

2) I run on a treadmill always after swimming, never the treadmill alone.

3) I do most of my training on soft trails and the extra impact gets to me.

After a mile on the treadmill I cautiously stopped and moved to the elliptical machine due to a dull ache in my shin. I continued for another mile and a half, which was until the ache became painful. The extra "easy" mileage wasn't worth increasing a possible injury. On Thursday I warmed and stretched the area several times without pain but decided to hold off doing anything till Saturday's soccer game.

On two days rest I was a soccer machine, only my legs weren't made of metal and the opponents' cleats didn't exactly bounce off the area left unprotected by shin guards. The spot outside and just above both ankles are now bruised from the hacks in my league. Nothing serious though. We won the game 4-0 for anyone who's wondering.

Sunday's long run definitely took strong will. Had it not been only eight miles I might have sat at home and called it a lazy day for recuperating from soccer. But after a good warm-up and stretch I was awake and ready to go. There was some residual pain from the bruised ankles but none from Wednesday's shin/treadmill episode. Luckily the pain I did have didn't alter my stride so I ran well. Afterwards I got a feeling of tremendous accomplishment. That familiar feeling to which I can only respond with, "I'm glad I did this."