In my return to running, I've gone 37-45-38-50 for weekly mileage with most weeks feeling healthier than the last. I definitely feel significantly more strain on my achilles when doing the workouts, so now that I'm not racing outdoor I'll cut out the workouts until I can run without having to tape up my leg and am more fit/have more mileage under my belt. My first outdoor collegiate race was pretty rough as I dropped a 9:30 in the 3K, which is the slowest time I think I've run since sophomore year of high school and my first time over 9 minutes in about 3 years. I obviously wasn't ready to race and felt a lot of strain on my injuries, but I don't regret it as it was worth giving the season a shot. It's disappointing to miss outdoor but we don't really even have a long distance squad this year (2 of the guys are injured, 2 of the guys are out of shape) and the meets haven't been great regardless (good competition sometimes, but mostly local stuff that's hard to get excited about).
The plan moving forward is to continue to monitor both my achilles injury and smaller ailments (usual shin splints, a little bit of foot tightness from January, somewhat strained/tight hip flexor) while slowly building mileage/fitness for some fun summer races, FKTs and Cross Country. There are some road races and trail races in June, but don't seem to be much after that. Outside of running the Mount Washington Road Race on June 20th, I don't really have any plans, just a lot of possibilities. I would like to return to high points this year and have been thinking about either driving west and doing a handful of midwest high point, or going south and doing some of the southern appalachians. I am signed up for the peachtree road race in Atlanta, but I'm not sure whether or not I'll do it considering the price of hotels/flights and that I don't run very well in the heat. It'd appeal to me much more if I could combine it with some kind of southern highpointing trip. I'd also like to return to the triathlon this year. I've been enjoying biking much more than usual this year, even if I'm slower than pretty much anyone I know who bikes. I haven't done a tri in quite a while and it's a pretty great sport. I can't see myself seriously training for the bike or swim, but considering I've nearly PR'd for yearly mileage on a bike just 1/3 into the year, I should definitely be much stronger than in year's past. Next month will probably be a boring mileage build with minimal workouts and hard efforts and mostly focusing on getting/staying healthy, but I look forward to the period after that. Anyway, here's this weeks log. I won't write about the last few weeks, but I've made most of the activities public on strava.
Monday: 0
Completely off. Certain things trashed from the race and PT didn't want to me run either.
Tuesday: 4 Miles
Planned a 10 mile local trail loop. Wore these adidas I got a month ago in the hope they'd help with achilles pain (they didn't) and for some reason, my left foot gets extremely tight and painful in them. Could not deal with it anymore after a few miles, so I turned around and just called it. Shin was pretty tight anyway.
Wednesday: 10 Miles
Drove home in the afternoon as I had a few days off school, stopped at Minuteman National Historical Park in Lincoln, MA to get in my run. The battle road is a really nice smooth gravel surface and has cool scenery to run by in the form of historical (american revolution) houses and monuments. Ran the entire battle road trail out and back for the first time (I usually do a short run here after hiking in the white mountains). Very convenient place to stop right off I-95. Moderate shin discomfort, high hip flexor discomfort, low achilles discomfort. Tired in the later miles.
Thursday: 10 Miles
Ninigret with Dad and dog in rain/windy conditions. Low discomfort on all injuries but legs really heavy and a bit of struggle to go anything but slow.
Friday: 8 Miles
Bluff point run. I haven't run technical trails all year and this was a shock to the system, especially running them when the trails were wet and flooded in areas. Got dropped as I just can not run comfortably fast on wet technical terrain (and my achilles probably isn't quite ready for it either). Had some foot discomfort which was annoying, same thing as January injury. Was worried about but it seems fine two runs later.
Saturday: 10 Miles
Was lacking motivation to run after waiting all day and going solo. Goal was to hit 10 today so I could just run 8 Sunday to hit 50 on the week. Surprisingly felt strong throughout and went by quickly, went 6:20s for the last mile which I definitely did not feel good enough to do any other day this week. Started at Chariho high school and made a lollipop on Carter trails. Interestingly, my hip flexor was tight/sore again, guessing any degree of steep incline/decline causes this. Something I need to get better before mountain running, but it's also not a huge issue. Easily the best feeling run of the week.
Sunday: 8 Miles
Regular rhody loop. Felt kind of flat today and we went slow.
Weekly Total: 50 Miles
YTD Total: 360 Miles (according to strava, I'll just let strava track it from now on). Funny how this is only slightly more than I ran in January or March 2020. Definitely not PR'ing for yearly mileage in 2021.
Weekly Highlight: Feeling strong on the Chariho-Carter run when I came into it worried about foot pain.
Weekly Lowlight: Having to deal with four "injuries" at once and even when 3 of them are great, struggling with another area.
Random questions/thoughts:
-What pace should you shoot for on the run leg of a triathlon? I feel like any run portions of a tri in the past for me have been really slow and I should probably be running 5:20s-5:30s for a 5K.
-I've run in 5 of 6 New England states this year, almost certainly the earliest in a year I've run in Maine. I feel like I could run in a lot of states this year, depending on what I do for travel. Unfortunately, Vermont is really far out of the way and I don't really have a lot of bucket list runs/races to do there like I do for the other states.
-Where are good places for Southern Rhode Islanders to train for the Mount Washington road race? I was thinking doing repeats on the Wachusett Mountain auto road and Castle Craig road would be a good start, but those are still only a fraction of the full length of Mt. Wash and a good drive away.
-The high point of Illinois, Charles Mound, is only open 5 weekends a year. This is pretty frustrating inconvenience for highpointers to work around and seems selfish the owners won't allow more weekends or give up the property to the state.
-I somewhat enjoy running in the cold rain. It's definitely miserable sometimes, but other times there's a peacefulness to the raw weather. I don't think anyone in the world feels the same way. My ideal walking temperature is probably 40 degrees with a slight breeze.
Potential summer races:
-Mount Washington road race (Registered and planning on doing it)
-Peachtree road race (Registered, but not sure if I'll do it)
-Black fly in my eye 10 mile trail race: fun looking trail race at the base of mount washington, could be a good tune-up for MWRR but not sure what the competition is like
-Loon Mountain Race
-Newport 10 Miler: scenic and fast course, I'd need to be in pretty good shape by then (June 6)
-Shad Bloom: this race looks great, but I'll still be in NH for school and I don't know if I'll be healthy enough for a hard 10K effort by then
-Pineland farms trail festival
-Harvest triathlon: great, single loop Olympic courses
-Run 4 Kerri
Chocorua mountain race and Catamount ultras look really cool, but have massive waitlists so there isn't really a chance of running them.
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