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."

Week 2 Recap

I hope everyone had a nice, long Thanksgiving break this past weekend. I know I did. It was a relaxing, albeit lazy week since I skipped a few workouts. That's to be expected though, right? After eating some turkey, eight rolls, a pound of mashed potatoes, and drinking a liter of Coke, who wants to do a tempo run? Not me.

From Thursday on out was not a complete loss. On Saturday I took part in a friendly game of tackle football. Sure I'm 30 years old and probably shouldn't be playing but I couldn't resist. After a few plays it was quite evident I was in much better shape than any of the 20-something guys I was playing with. I've found its difficult to be modest about being a triathlete when you're schooling people with fitness alone. I won't even get into my other grand football abilities.

Sunday was a day of rest to recuperate from the football game. I was tight from all the sprinting to say the least. I broke out the heating pads for a few sore spots and stretched them out good. If you've been following along, this meant I was missing the important 11-mile run I was scheduled for. Given that Week 3 is an easy week I opted to replace the first easy day with the long run. I finished that last night and felt great the whole way, which was a huge difference from Week 1's 10-miler. Some might find this odd but I'm looking forward to Week 4's 13-mile run.

Week 2's volume was up slightly to 5 1/2 hours due to my introduction of swimming. I swam 3500 yards and ran 22.5 miles (including Monday's run). You might have noticed I didn't do any of the planned biking. I've decided to wait until I purchase a time trial bike, which could be this coming weekend.