Recovery Slash Taper

Ok, so I ran that race on Wednesday, completely unprepared after not doing any speedwork for months, and when I had tried a few workouts I had to stop after 2 weeks because I started to feel overtrained straight away.

In light of that, I actually did reasonably well by running 20:29 on a long course, even if it certainly was nothing to write home about. About a month or two ago I considered concentrating on shorter races for a while but I think running that race reminded me that I was never particularly fond of short distances for a reason, so maybe I'll skip that. On the other hand, some fast running is supposed to be really beneficial for us older runners, so maybe I should anyway?

In the aftermath of the race I was feeling fine on Thursday morning, got gradually more sore throughout the day and felt really sore on Friday, which is of course classic DOMS. Saturday was already better, and I can't really tell if Sunday was an improvement because I ran a a really hilly loop.

Thursday's recovery run was dead slow, Friday was a bit faster, which is rather surprising because the legs felt like dead wood, and Saturday was another improvement.

Whether it was a bright idea to race a 5K fairly close to a marathon that I feel utterly unprepared for is another question, though a lot of marathon training plans tend to have a workout like 3 x 1 mile 10 days out, which is admittedly not the same as a 5K race but still somewhat similar.

What surprised me the most, and what I cannot explain at all, is why my VDOT number for the race was significantly better than for any training run I've done, at 54.6, when I usually don't even get to 50. With all the slow running I've done recently you'd think I'd be better at running slowly than at running fast.

Actually, the other thing that surprised me that I was even able to run at roughly sub-20 pace. I struggled to go faster than 7:30 in training, and running over a minute per mile faster in a race is a bit baffling, especially since I paced myself so badly and started with a sub-6 mile.

Anyway, I'm supposed to taper this week though I have done so little training that I'm not sure what I would be tapering from, and most of my training weeks look like I've been tapering for months already. Ah Jesus, how did I get myself into this mess?

6 Sep

4+ miles, 37:01, 9:05 pace, HR 141

7 Sep

4+ miles, 35:05, 8:36 pace, HR 143

8 Sep

4+ miles, 33:44, 8:17 pace, HR 146

9 Sep

7.5 miles, 1:05:52, 8:46 pace, HR 148