So glad to be writing these again! I’m officially back to running, yay!

My first run was on Thursday. I went out on the downtown greenway after work in my new shoes. We had had mild weather the past few days, but, of course, on the day I start running it’s 87 and humid. I used this as my excuse (and the fact that I hadn’t ran in four weeks) to the number of times I had to walk, but when I started analyzing my Garmin data, I realized what it really was.

Dear self, what is this? Remember that pep talk we had about pacing? Do you not remember that? Why would you bust out on your first run in a month with an under 11 min/mile pace? Why would you even go under a 10 min/mile pace? Under 9 min/mile? Are you insane? No wonder you had to walk so much.

Deciding I needed to retrain my legs on what it feels like to run at a sustainable pace, I hit the treadmill on Sunday. I did half a mile at 4.5 mph (13:19 min/mile), then half a mile at 5.0 mph (12:00 min/mile). I took a walking/water break for a tenth of a mile, then did another half mile at 5.0 mph. I tried to ramp it up to 5.5 mph (10:54 min/mile) at one point, but tired quickly.

As far as my hip injury goes, it felt fine on Thursday’s run. However, on Friday, I took a misstep off a sidewalk at lunch and hurt it again. *face palm* I could definitely feel it on Sunday due to that, so I’m not really sure how to precede. I took a restorative yoga class on Sunday afternoon, which helped to stretch it at least, so I may continue to see if yoga will help. If not, I guess I will suck it up and see the physical therapist after all.

Last weekly update for a few weeks!

Not a whole lot to report on, since you’ve hopefully already read my race report from Thursday.

I did do one other run earlier in the week, on Tuesday. I planned to go out for a couple miles before work, but it ended up turning into a 5k distance run. My legs were pretty stiff, but I didn’t experience any of that at the race (whether that was due to adequate warming up or the Tylenol, I’m not sure). The three miles didn’t feel quite as good as the four miles I had run two days earlier, though my average pace was faster.

After the race on Thursday, my left leg was pretty dead. My hip/groin injury was terrible, and it would spasm whenever I made any sudden movements. By Friday, it was a little better, though I was still shuffling/limping around a bit. Hopefully the physical therapist will sort all of this out in the coming weeks, and by the next weekly update, everything will feel wonderful!

I managed to do three stiff runs this week in order to try to figure out what I should do for the Fourth of July 10k. I basically have three options:
(a) run the full 10k
(b) downgrade to the 5k (I have to decide this before Tuesday)
(c) don’t run

I’m going in for an x-ray today, so if the doctor says no running, I guess that’s my only option, but I honestly don’t think I have a stress fracture. No matter what I decide, I will probably not be doing a lot of running over the month of July and opt for physical therapy instead so I can make sure these injuries don’t occur again. So part of me just wants to suck it up and with my last hoorah, go ahead and run the thing.

I waited until Wednesday to first test my legs. This means it had been a little over a week since my last (terrible) run. I got up bright and early (hi, 5am!) to avoid the heat. However, the 90% humidity meant it really didn’t make that much of a difference. My goal was to just do a very easy mile, with a planned one minute walk break at the halfway point. This is exactly what I did, and it wasn’t terrible. I could definitely feel my injuries, but I wasn’t limping along or shuffling like my last run.

I was a little sore the next day, but it wasn’t too bad, so on Friday morning, I did two miles. This was a little tougher. I took walk breaks whenever I felt like I needed them, so I was probably doing about a 1:1 run to walk ratio. A woman who looked to be in her 80s was running in the opposite direction as me around the neighborhood and much faster. I hope I can still do this when I’m 80. However, on this morning, my legs just felt dead. Like I was just dragging them along. Still actually running, though, and not shuffling.

With a rest day on Saturday, Sunday’s four mile planned run was the true test. The 10k has a time limit of an hour and a half. That means the absolute slowest I could run/walk it would be a 14:50/mile. Sounds slow, but it’s about what I had averaged on Friday. I definitely wouldn’t want to do the full 10k if I didn’t think I could even finish it within the time limit. My last 10k distance I had averaged 12:31/mile, so I knew it was possible, since that was just two weeks earlier and I had been injured then as well. So my four mile run goal was to see if I could endure that distance for less than a 14 min/mile.

I started out stiff, just like my last few runs. The first two miles were slow, but I did manage to keep them under 14 min/mile. After about 2.5 miles, however, I got into my normal rhythm and started to speed up. The last mile and a half were done at my “usual” pace of about 11:30/mile. Yay! I’m guessing the sub-70 degree morning temperature had something to do with my speed. And, guess what? My calf and my hip didn’t hurt the entire run! After I finished, I enjoyed a glass of chocolate milk to celebrate and then waited to see if any pain would settle in. It didn’t.

Look at those negative splits!

With the success of Sunday’s run, I’m leaning toward doing the full 10k. I could have gone for another two miles, no problem. We will see what the doctor says, but at the moment, I plan to go for it!