Blake Bennions running

Some running while I walked with Becca and Whitney. I did a stride and got down to sub 6 pace for a bit. Ankles felt a little off today, I'm going to try kt tape instead of the compression sleeve/brace tomorrow.

Warmed up with Landon and Jake and then did 5x2 minutes on 2 minutes off on the track. Well they did 6 but I took the 5th one off to stretch out my ankle. Paces were 5:34, 5:27, 5:21, 5:18, 5:13. So overall I guess close to 2 miles at goal 10k pace. Not that I will be racing that pace on Thursday haha, especially with how that pace felt today in terms of my fitness. I'm sure all the biking and rowing has helped preserve some fitness but nothing fully replaced running. I think it will take another 2-3 weeks to get back to normal. I'll try some downhill road running tomorrow and Wednesday and if that feels good I'll run the 10k but I'm not planning to race it.

I tried the kt tape today and my ankle felt pretty good, a lot better than yesterday. It's really just the back of my ankle that's still bothering me a bit and that comes and goes.

Easy run with 4 strides. Felt increasingly good on each stride, but not to the point that the pace felt smooth or easy. I've been doing almost all of my miles on the track so far, so tomorrow I'll test out doing a couple of downhill road miles. Worst case scenario if my ankle starts hurting during Des news I can just go over to 700 east and walk jog over to liberty park.

Ran up and down shady lane a couple times. Warm up felt a little stiff and my ankle felt a little weak, not painful.

Once I'd warmed up 1.5 miles I put on my race shoes to see how those felt and they felt better than my trainers- like about 100%. I ran a quarter mile downhill on shady lane in 77 seconds and it felt great. No pain and the pace felt easy and very sustainable. There's a reasonable chance I could actually race tomorrow. I will just go by feel tomorrow, if I'm feeling good and no pain maybe I'll try a couple of fast miles. If I'm feeling some ankle pain I'll slow down or stop altogether.

Came in today open to racing for a pr or stopping early on in the race and walking to liberty park. I'd give this outcome an A-. I felt perfect warming up and doing strides so I decided to give it a shot today. My one big misstep pre-race was that without thinking I tried jumping hard as part of my pre-race dynamics and that hurt my ankle a bit. No lingering pain though so I decided to test it out.

First two miles were 10:06 and I felt really good, but my ankle started hurting so I backed off to a pace where it felt better- happened to be about 5:50. I stayed there for most the rest of the run. My quads still got absolutely destroyed from this run, I haven't done any downhill in a month and the bike does not work your quads that way. The people I was around at mile 2 ended up finishing just over or under 32:00 so I'm excited for peach days when I'm fully healthy and have more workout in me. Obviously it's a much slower course, but the upside of running a relatively slow time today is that I can almost definitely PR my 10k at Peach days with hopefully a sub 34.

Unfortunately tripped on a stick walking out of liberty park and hurt my ankle a bit after the race was over so its a little sore now, but pretty minor setback. I think I'll be fine to run tomorrow honestly but will take it off if it's hurting in the morning.

Legs were so sore, slow jog around Lora and Georges neighborhood.