Restart Anew - Again!

So I listened to my body, mainly because it started screaming at me, and made some changes. Not a lot, just enough to hopefully get through this recovery period.

I put the HR alarm back onto my watch. At the start of the year I gradually started to develop a psychotic hate relationship with the constant "beep beep" every time I started to move my legs and eventually took it off, promising myself never to put it back on again, However, the recent couple of weeks have made me break my promise to myself, though I set the alarm threshold at a higher level, which is hopefully a reasonable compromise between keeping myself in check and still being able to enjoy a run.

I did that on Sunday. The HR of each run since has been coming down gradually, and I can already feel some positive effects. After a rather frightening weather forecast, the brilliant sunshine on Tuesday morning came as a complete and very welcome surprise. It sure started the day off on a positive note, and maybe that was the reason why I actually started enjoying running again. The legs finally felt better, though the fact that I had run the previous days at a slightly more sedate pace may be a more rational explanation. I even felt brave enough to add 2 miles to my run, mostly because I thought running the same 8 mile run on the same route 7 times in a row was already more than enough. I might be a creature of habit but I do have some limits.

The legs were still in good shape after 8 miles, though they did start to complain towards the end but since this had been the first double digit run since Turin this wasn't overly alarming.

My feet are in a funny state, ever since Turin. My toes almost feel like they are tingling, except they are not quite (not sure if that makes sense). One of my toenails has gone a distinctly darker shade of grey - I'm not sure if that means it's eventually going to fall off, because I have never had that happen to me, a rather unusual state of affairs for an ultra runner but there you go.

My Achilles/calves area in both legs feels very stiff, especially first thing in the morning. Old age has something to do with it because I have been noticing this for at least a year now but it has become significantly worse since Turin and is the main reason why the first mile of each run is always so pathetically slow,

I tried to use The Stick on my legs muscles. This is a tried and tested way to get some relief for aching legs but no joy. They are not sore in the usual way, there are no knots or tight muscles; whatever damage Turin has done to my legs, it's more fundamental than your usual heavy legs after a marathon.

Anyway, with the legs finally feeling better this morning, this feels like a minor miracle. I'll see how it goes but I'm rather hopeful that the worst is now behind me and proper recovery can finally commence. I'm supposed to pace the Cork marathon in 4 weeks. Right now I'm scratching my head how on Earth I could possibly be fit enough by then to run 26.2 miles at some half-decent pace but I know that I have felt doubtful before previous pacing jobs and in the end they have always gone reasonably well, so maybe there's still hope.

2 May

8 miles, 1:06:04, 8:15 pace, HR 148

3 May

8 miles, 1:06:25, 8:18 pace, HR 144

4 May

8 miles, 1:07:36, 8:27 pace, HR 142

5 May

10 miles, 1:24:31, 8:27 pace, HR 140