Go slow to go fast.

Wow...slow running at its finest!  3 miles in about 36 minutes....nice!  At least my knees weren't totally wobbly by the end.  It felt good to get some movement.

Well...still slow.  But not wobbly this time, that's a plus

3 miles flatish in about 32:30. 

And what do you know?  Still slow!  But feeling better each day.  Today I felt totally normal starting out the run.  But my legs still feel like they have a slow governor on them.

4.75 Miles - 47:50 (10:01) - 500' vertical.  

Who knows, maybe by tomorrow I might be able to get my speed down to like 9:30 avg pace at this rate!

I clearly need the slower, easy miles right now though.  Even though my muscles weren't sore at all after the race, my joints (hips and knees) were somewhat tender and are the seemingly limiting factors right now.  Good to take a slow week though to fully recover. 

Very nice morning easy run in the sun with my neighbor Steve (the one who took 8th place on Saturday handily kicking my butt).  We just took it really easy up skunk canyon across mesa and down bear back to lower skunk and home.  Really fun run.  Great to be cruising easy on single track and chatting for an hour catching up on the race and talking about plans for the year etc.

And the legs are coming around more and more each day getting closer to normal again.  Felt almost normal today actually...still a bit slow and a minor twinge around my left knee at one point.  But I went to Richey for some ART directly after the run and I can already tell that was really beneficial.

8 miles - 1:13:29 (9:13)  - HR 140 avg - 1080' vertical

My good friend Eric was in town for the Pearl Izumi trail team summit, he was hired as the photographer.  And so he invited me out to run with the group Friday morning.  

It was cool to meet Tim Olson and Ian Sharman, as well as to run and chat for a while with Nick Clark and Scott Jaime.  A bunch of cool people in that group.

We ended up navigating sheets of ice under and inch of fresh powder on the mesa trail which was interesting since nobody had spikes on and everyone was falling all over the place.  It was kind of comical.  But we managed to get a run in.

Although my left knee started feeling pain on the back/side periodically throughout the easy run, and made me well aware that something is going on in my left leg that needs attention.  I made it through the run ok by stretching my hip/glut a couple times, but realized I need to get some knots and junk worked out in my upper calf, hammy, and glut before I should be running on this thing and aggravating it.  

Scheduled a massage for saturday and an extended ART session for Monday. 

no running today...got a good short massage on my left leg mostly.

I'm glad I have plenty of time and no rush to fully recover from Moab, because I obviously need it.  I never felt any pain in the race...but its obvious that the 34 miles of steady effort taxed my left glut/hamstring, and upper left calf.  So I will just take it really easy this next week, and get a couple good ART sessions in, and do very light active recovery.  

Its annoying to have tight/painful spots...but the timing is as good as it could possibly be if I have to have them.