A clydesdale no more!

Due to my modified running gait, I am now experiencing pain in my gastrocnemius. It hurts while walking now. Have decided to take this week completely off. St George is my goal race so I would rather take some time off now. I am going to run Park City and TOU very conservatively just so that I can finish the grand slam.

Like alot of people that started running in the current boom, I skipped all the baby steps to get to the marathon and jumped right into the big daddy. I think that, going forward, I am going to focus on shorter races (5K-1/2 marathon) and improve on those. My body is just not responding to marathon training the way that I expected it to.

Calf was feeling better so I decided to test it. Besides, I couldn't pass up the perfect running temperature. Plan was to go as long as it was comfortable. If significant pain started or if my gait became altered, I would stop. Ran a loop that has several points that I could bail and head home. After 1/4 mile, I decided to push the pace for 1/4 mile to see what would happen. Felt pretty good. Backed off for a while then bumped the pace up to 5k pace for 1/4 mile. Continued with the fartlek until mile 4 (mixed in marathon pace, 1/2 marathon pace and easy pace) when my calf started to ache a little. Ran 2 easy mile back home. Although I am not pain free, I was able to run normally and even push the pace. This is a good sign that the leg is healing. The real test will be tomorrow morning. Hopefully, I won't have a set back.

Took it easy today. A couple of times I thought of stretching the run out a little bit but decided that it was better to be conservative.

I have been able to push a little more each day. While I am not pain free, I feel as though my calf is healing. I've been running the same loop for 3 days in a row. It is getting kind of boring but I am still tentative to hit any significant hills since this seems to aggrevate the injury. Hoping to get in 18 tomorrow.

The first 3 miles I was light headed. I was also sweating a little more than I thought I should have been. The next few miles felt pretty good. Once I got to mile 11 my calf was really hurting. The last 6 miles were pretty painful. While the pain was discouraging, I do feel better this week than I did last week. I guess it is 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Everything else felt really good. I'm hoping my fitness hasn't dropped off too much. It has been a few weeks since I have had a good quality workout.