Week 8 12/31-1/6

I ran really low mileage this week because of my ankle.  I only hit 59 miles, but I biked another 30+.  Hopefully next week goes way better.

12/31 - I didn’t really have time to do two runs today with work and I slept in late, so I combined the two into one 11 miler.  It felt pretty good, but my ankle continued to be a little sore on the second half of the run.  It seems to bother me whenever I do sprints or run down hills.  Hopefully I can start wrapping it better and it’ll go away soon.

Total 11 miles, 73 minutes

1/01 - In the morning I started the new year off with a run to my grandmas nursing home for 6 miles.  It turned out to be a pretty good route with a few hills and a lot of grass to run on along the sidewalk.  After that  I relaxed for awhile then went for the workout in the afternoon.  It was 4×3 miles with 5 minute recovery, but I got tired of standing around between reps so my recovery was 5then 4 then 3 minutes.  I struggled to settle into pace between the miles, starting the first one at 5:50 then the next three at 6:10.  My 3 mile splits varied a lot too.  I ran 18:14, 17:38, 18:00, 17:52.  I was happy that I made the pace on all them but it was bad I couldn’t settle into a steady pace.  The first 3 weren’t too hard but I had to work a little and the last one I actually had to push it fairly hard to make pace.

Total 21 miles, 131 minutes

1/02 - I moved my recovery day for the week to today to get back on schedule.

1/03 - I went for a bike ride today, since I had a long run scheduled and I hadn’t got a chance to ride all break long.  I went for just over 30 miles at 15 mph for a good long ride.  The first half was into the wind and my tires were extremely low on air, which made it hard, but once I stopped to get air and turned back with the wind the ride went real well.  It felt nice to be on the bike for a change.

Bike 30.5 miles, 124 minutes

1/04 - After the day off and biking yesterday I decided to just go for one run and see if the time helped my ankle get stronger or not.  Luckily it did and there was no pain on my run today.  I went for an hour in the 45 degree rain and felt good the whole way.  I was glad not to have any pain at all for the first time in a week or two.

Total 9 miles, 60 minutes

1/05 - I ran a really strong workout today, but unfortunately my mile loop was about 50 meters short so all my splits are about 5-10 seconds faster than they should be.  The workout was 4xmile followed by a 400 on 1 minute recovery each.  After each set there was 2 minutes recovery and I did 3 sets for a total of 12 miles.  The miles were 5:24, 5:25, 5:21, 5:22, 5:24, 5:21, 5:23, 2:42(800), 5:23, 5:18, 5:21.  The one where I only did half of it was because my ankle started to hurt and I readjusted my shoe and wrap a little bit and the pain went away so I decided to finish the workout after that.  The 400’s were 66, 64, 60.  I was real happy with my last 400 even though I was running virtually all out a 60 after 14 miles of running is good.  My warm up and cool down were both a little over two miles in 15 minutes each.  It was a good workout, but unfortunately my ankle started to hurt again.

Total 16.5 miles, 95 minutes

1/06 - My ankle was killing me today after 3 minutes of running at Castlewood, so I tried to keep going because of the long drive, but I had to stop at 10 minutes.  After that  iced in the river and did a lot of push ups and crunches to try to stay warm waiting for Max.  It was a bad day.

Total 1.5 miles, 10 minutes