Bouncing Back

Today marks two weeks since the marathon, and while the initial euphoria has worn off, the warm inner glow is still there. Not even a week back in the office could extinguish that. I must be experiencing the polar opposite of the post-marathon blues, but I've never suffered from those anyway.

On Wednesday, as I was getting up from the office chair, I felt a sharp pain in my right knee, and it has not been right since. Maybe I should have tapered my return to work, 8 hours in one go was obviously too much. The knee feels ok most of the time but there is some discomfort after running for 5 or 6 miles, and running uphill seems to aggravate it more than anything else; I won't be doing any mountains this week. As I'm pretty sure that it's not a running injury as such, and that it's getting better, I won't let it influence my running.

I did not have a plan for this week, just ran a few miles every morning, but was rather surprised when I added up the miles this morning and came up with 62. That's a lot more than I was expecting, and probably a bit more than is advisable. My legs felt rather heavy today and yesterday, and the mileage may well have something to do with that. Having said that, after a succession of runs with the HR in the 150s I seem to have gotten a handle on that and I have noticed a drop in the HR for the same perceived effort; I may start bouncing back after the marathon. Still, the next few weeks will see nothing but lazy running.

Our garden was well on its way turning itself into a jungle habitat and I finally got the lawn mower out of hibernation. Before the marathon I was always too exhausted from training to do any gardening work, then we were away on our holidays, and now it's already May. If I had realised just how much work it takes to look after an acre of garden, I would have told Niamh to pick a smeller house (yeah, right). After 6 hours of toiling I had gotten two-thirds through and the lawn mower ran out of patrol. But instead of praise, all I got from Maia was "Daddy, why did you cut down all the Daisies?". Sometimes you just can't win.

The Rally of the Lakes was on this weekend (it still is, actually), and one of the stages started right on our road. We went down the driveway to seem them all queuing up; the start of the stage itself was less than a quarter mile down the road. The kids were quite excited by it all; I just wished the event would not attract all those boy racers.

28 Apr

8 miles, 1:03:16, 7:55 pace, HR 146

29 Apr

8 miles, 1:01:40, 7:53 pace, HR 146

30 Apr

10 miles, 1:18:32, 7:51 pace, HR 149

1 May

12 miles, 1:35:20, 7:56 pace, HR 144

Weekly Mileage: 62