faster with age

I have been running just over two years. I have been dealing with a high hamstring problem since mid november. It seems to do alright if I keep the pace slow and avoid running consecutive days. Every time it has started feeling better and I run a few faster miles I end up setting myself backward 2 or three weeks. I ran the painters 1/2 marathon in Jan. and didn't push to hard. I didn't wind up with to much soreness and thought I was recovered but as I added some more miles and a few faster runs it came back. I haven't had any flareups for about three weeks now and I've been riding a bike on days between running. I keep my fingers crossed after every run. It's usually not until that night or the next day that I can tell I overdid it and that makes it easier to go faster or farther than I should have.

This was a beautiful morning for running it was 16 degrees to begin but it was sunny with no wind we still have a lot of snow but it's going fast. I went for 9mi at a comfortable pace and felt like going a few more but decided I better not push my luck. I barley felt anything from my hamstring throughout the run. normaly I'll get a little more discomfort in the latter miles but this morning it felt no different at the end. Most of the run I kept about an 8:40 pace with last 2 around 8:10 overall pace 8:36.

This morning I went for an 18 mile bike ride. 1:10. Mountain bike. Gravel road. Another nice morning. Not sure of the best way to figure cross training miles. I guess I'll count that as about 6 mi.

Later went for a very easy 4 mile run at about a 9:15 pace. Last week I did easy 2 mi. runs on my bike days without any negative affects to my hamstring. A few weeks ago when I would run consecutive days of 6-9 miles at average pace I would wind up with more pain. Today seems to be no problem. So far.

This morning I wanted to do some hills. I found on a couple of my earlier recovery attempts that I could run a harder effort up a steep hill going slow with less hamstring pain than that same effort on the level. I felt like it was because of the shorter stride length. At the same time running faster down the hill lengthens the stride back out but the easier effort seems to put less strain on the hamstrings.

I have a mile long hill by my house that climbs 240 feet. The sign at the top calls it a 6 percent grade but the first and last 200s taper off a bit. I started with a 3 1/2 mi. warmup on the level at about 8:45 pace then down the hill in 7:22 back up in 9:28 then down in 6:55 which is faster than my current mp but probably a slow mp effort with the hill. then back up in 8:08 which was definatly a threshold effort.I didn't plan on going that hard on the last hill but the hamstring felt strong and I couldn't resist. I felt pretty good since this is the hardest effort I have run any distance in 5 months.I finished with 1 1/2 cooldown with a total of 9mi. total time 1:11 overall ave. 8:26

I had planned a bike day today with a short run later. I ended up being gone all day and when I had the chance it was quite rainy and muddy for a bike ride so I just wimped out and did the easy run at a very slow pace around 9 to 9 1/2 ave. I didn't feel real energetic today but that could be partly that I don't normaly run in the evening or something to do with the large meal I ate about an hour earlier. This was the first run I can remember in quite a while that I felt zero from my hamstring start to finish. I haven't felt what I would call pain for a while but there's generally some sensation just letting me know it's still there. I'm sure the easy pace had a lot to do with it but I'm quite pleased expecially after a couple of harder miles yesterday.

This morning I did an 18 mile bike ride before the ground thawed and got muddy. Mountain bike on gravel road. Time 1:14 HR 132.

Ran 4 mi. just before noon at an easy 9 minute + pace. It felt good and I wanted to go faster but resisted.

Nice morning for a run. 28 degrees with no wind and a few light snow flakes. Went 13 miles with none faster than 8:00 with an overall pace of 8:19. I felt real good this morning expecially after the first three miles. I added 12 miles to my weekly running over the last two weeks [8 of it this week] I'm a little worried about that being too much but what I added were 3 very easy 4 mile runs to days I hadn't been running. My energy seemed to be good on all the runs I had been doing normally including todays and I don't have any new achs or pains. I was wondering how todays run would feel after the extra miles this week and running 6 days straight [which I'm not used to]  right now I feel pretty good.  My hamstring is the best it's been in 3 1/2 months. I'm not sure what to do next week but I probably won't add much if any.