Chasing my Dreams

Had a solid run in West Point, It was perfect running weather, and I was thoroughly enjoying being back in West Point. Obviously the legs were still fairly tired, but I felt like I maintained a pretty good pace.

The legs did not have it this morning. I ended up running decently quick for the first half because I was kind of racing this kid that was also out running and was like right behind me. My lower legs were especially sore. I did some strides afterwards, and the legs were not moving very fast at all.

Ran in the late afternoon/early evening, so my legs had around 36 hours of recovery. Things felt surprisingly good, and I ran a solid pace. I also really focused on keeping the effort on the uphills. It was also snowing through that whole run. My left lower leg started to hurt a little over the last couple of miles, which isn't good.

Did 7.5 this morning, and tried to just keep things pretty relaxed. The roads weren't in the best shape either, they were wet, slushy, and icy. My lower leg bothered me a little the last two miles or so, which I am pretty concerned about. I don't know why it does this to me. It may be the shoes?

I took it really easy because I wanted my lower leg to be good to go for the race tomorrow, and I'm not going to gain anymore fitness today. I ran 1.5 miles, then did 4 strides. My legs felt pretty good, but were a little stiff on the little uphill I did. I then jogged a little bit more.

Tom and I did a typical warmup that was pretty low-key. Things felt good, it was chilly for a race though, and the roads had a skiff of snow on them. I actually cut gettting to the starting line pretty close because I was changing into my kinvaras. The race played out pretty well. I went straight to the lead, and after the first half mile I already had a pretty decent lead. I felt really good for the first 3.5 to 4 miles of the race, but when I hit the crazy uphill for the last two miles it really slowed me down. My legs were barely moving at the top, despite the fact that my heartrate was through the roof. It took me a decent bit of the last downhill to get the legs back. My splits were 5:44, 5:12, 5:33, 5:41, 6:10, 6:31, and then like 54 seconds for the last .2 miles. Tom and I did a really slow mile cooldown. I also beat the next person by almost four and a half minutes.