Strides With A Sting

Ok, so last week I had felt really good and started to wonder if I had finally reached the turning point. This week was fairly crap again, so I guess I haven't. Maybe I need to forget about running competitively again but it's hard for the mind to let go.

Mind, the week could have ended a lot worse, but I'll get to that later.

I ran to and from office once a day Tuesday to Friday, and with Cabinteely Park about to be closed in the evenings I went back to my previous commute route through Kilbogget and Clonkeen Park, which is actually very nice but a mile longer, and on Thursday night it had the added challenge of feeling more like dodging all the illegal Halloween fireworks and didn't feel entirely safe, to be honest, but thankfully it all passed with out incident.

The real drama happened on Saturday, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it almost happened. I decided to do three laps of 30/30 (30 seconds fast, 30 seconds recovery) because I figured one of the problems with my running is the fact that I'm doing an awful lot of slow but very little fast running, so I decided to work on my leg turnover and hope it will improve my efficiency, basically trying to do a neuro-muscular workout.

I'm not biting my lip, that's the original swelling.

Anyway, all was going perfectly fine until early into the third lap when a wasp headed straight for my mouth, kamikaze style. I somehow managed to catch it with my lips, so when it did sting me it was at the inside of my lips rather than the back of my throat, which would have been a lot worse potentially because it immediately started to swell. I even managed to pull the stinger out of my lip there and then, but the damage had already been done. I was a bit shocked but figured I might as well finish the last of my workout before going home, what difference would it have made otherwise?

The swelling in my lip went down after a couple of hours but the left side of my face / jaw line started to swell instead. It's rather uncomfortable but manageable and it looks fairly awful. Two day earlier and I could have made use of it by dressing up as Quasimodo for Halloween without requiring a face mask, but I'd missed that! I took some antihistamines because I reckoned the swelling could have been an allergic reaction but it didn't seem to make any difference apart from making me drowsy for the rest of the day.

Well, no major harm done though it could have been a lot worse, which doesn't bare thinking about it. The legs felt fairly awful on Sunday, which I attribute to the strides rather than the sting, and I cut my planned long run short and finished the week just under 70 miles, which is still a high enough number anyway.

Getting Over It

Whatever I did to my knee, by last Friday it was already a lot better. To be honest, left to my own devices I would have tried running through it but the coach wasn't having any of that and cut the training right back, which, to be honest, makes a lot more sense so close to the Euros.

Running does not seem to aggravate the knee. However, as it turns out, sitting in a car for 4 hours, driving to Dublin, did. I was feeling rather stiff again on Saturday, and the journey home on Sunday evening wasn't exactly great for it either, so by Monday morning I felt almost back to zero. However, it wasn't quite as bad and it improved markedly day by day. On Wednesday I felt courageous enough to do some strides, more to test the knee than anything else. The stiffness was clearly noticeable when running fast and even more pronounced when decelerating after the strides. But I did not feel any repercussions afterwards and by Thursday morning the only time I felt something slightly off was when running downhill.

I know of course that the issue was caused by running but strangely enough, running then did not seem to aggravate it, Sitting did, in the office chair and even more so in the car. What helped was compression and icing, which I probably should have started earlier rather than waiting for a week. By now this has 98% cleared up and I'd love the coach to put on some miles again in the training plan, though she has given me a bit of leeway anyway.

With the Euros in 2 weeks there isn't much training I can do at this stage, I know that. I am looking at it as a rather long taper and you never know, that might be a good thing anyway.

3 Oct

0

4 Oct

5+ miles, 49:24, 9:46 pace, HR 131

5 Oct

5+ miles, 48:48, 9:39 pace, HR 134

   with strides

6 Oct

4 miles, 38:35, 9:38 pace, HR 131

Cortisol High

I am actually surprised I'm still standing, never mind being able to run tough long workouts. As of now I have been without proper sleep for two nights. I am feeling sick with stress and worry and whenever I try closing my eyes, no matter how exhausted, the thoughts keep spinning in my head and I am unable to sleep. On both recent nights I have been wide awake but exhausted until about 4 o'clock, and then I manage to drift off for a few minutes at a time but never for long and never into a proper sleep. The story around all this may well be worth telling, but not here and not now.

The world was still standing on Friday morning and I did 5 easy miles for recovery after Thursday's workout. The legs were a little bit heavy but reasonably fine and I did a few fast strides over the last mile or two, which probably explains much of the yet-again-elevated heart rate. Things started to unravel over Friday afternoon and when I got up on Saturday morning, no longer being able to cope with the bed any longer, I got dressed and ready to go. Except then I just could not get myself to open the door and go running. It wasn't the physical exhaustion from lack of sleep, it was the fact that I was emotionally drained and just could not face the freezing cold rain outside. I knew the weather was going to improve later and I would have time for a run around lunchtime, otherwise I guess I would have managed to go out regardless.

When I did go out on my second attempt several hours later the weather had turned really nice, cold but crispy clear. I decided to do 6 easy miles. By the 3 mile point I did not want to turn around and ran for another mile before finally executing that u-turn. At some point I caught a glimpse of the watch and saw a HR in the 150s when I would have expected it to be in the 130s at the time. I guessed the stress levels were playing havoc because the effort was completely easy, or so I thought. It wasn't until I came back home that I realised that what had felt like a slow recovery jog was in fact 7:21 pace. I had messed up my Sunday run last week by running too hard on Saturday, so I was definitely worried about tomorrow's long run. At least that long run was a plain old long run with no faster segment, which made it feel much more do-able, even with the pace too high on Saturday.

Another sleepless night later I got up early again but actually had a bowl of cereal and a banana before going out. I have not eaten before a training run in years but last week's horror show was too much on my mind and I preferred taking some extra calories onboard instead of running for miles on empty again, fat adaptation be damned. The weather was beautiful again, which undoubtedly helped my clouded mind, and I opted for the very hilly loop around Caragh lake, followed by a loop to Ard-na-Sidhe to add up to 22 miles. It all went very well. I started feeling tired after 17 miles and fought side stitches for a mile at 18 but even then preferred to be out running rather than sitting at home with my demons. The fatigue and the stitch faded away again and I was still running well at the end. A marathon wouldn't have taken much out of me today either. At least my endurance is still good.

26 Feb

5 miles, 40:50, 8:10 pace, HR 144, with strides

27 Feb

8 miles, 58:49, 7:21 pace, HR 150

28 Feb

22 miles, 2:50:57, 7:46 pace, HR 149

Weekly Mileage: 70