faster with age

    This morning I ran 5 miles. The hamstring did pretty good. I walked 4 times and ran a 9:50 pace. Last week while running I would get pain halfway down to my knee. Today I didn't get that at all just a burning up higher in my butt area that didn't get much worse during the run. That was definitly the biggest improvement I have seen so far.

    I went for 15 miles on the mt. bike. I woke up last Sat. morning with a sore hip flexor most likely from going from 40 miles a week on the bike to 140 much to quickly not to mention the upped intensity on a lot of the rides to try and match what I would be doing if I was still running. I took it easy on Sat., rested Sun., and went easy again today. It was still sore Sun. but feels pretty good today. Hopfully I will be able to replace a lot af that riding with running  soon.

    PM 1 mile

    This morning I thought I'd run a slow 5 miles again but a little after the first mile I started having some of the pain I was having last week in the hamstring. I didn't have any pain there yesterday so I finally decided to call it off after a little more than 2 miles and had to walk back. I could have kept running but I just don't want to chance going backward with this injury. I then went 24 miles on my mt bike offroad.

     Yesterday I was proud of myself for ending my run when I did because my hamstring was feeling a lot better all day. I was thinking about how good todays run was going to be. Then last night while irrigating I was pulling on a pipe that came loose when I wasn't expecting it and caused me to twist and step awkwardly. I felt a sharp pain in my hamstring where I must have reinjured it a bit. This morning it still hurt just to walk on it as much as it did 2 weeks ago before I started any running again. So no running this morning. I went 20 miles on the mt. bike at medium hard intensity.

    Today I still had a little soreness from the reinjury 2 days ago so I decided not to run again. I went for 20 miles on the mt. bike. I'm hoping I can run a little tomorrow. Our temps have been a little crazy. Yesterday morning I had ice on the alfalfa when I went out to move the wheel lines. It damaged some of our squash plants in the garden but luckily not the tomatoes. This is awfully early for frost and our last frost this spring was June 11 which is extra late. Not much of a growing season this year. It's hard to belive it could be 32 deg in the morning then up tp 80 deg 6 hours later.

    I had an encouraging run today. I went 3 miles at 8:47 pace. Pain was very minimal and felt fine afterward. In my previous runs since the injury I have had to keep the pace around 10 min. to avoid pain so the pace was good. I took one short break in the middle.

    One positive to come from this injury is that it's got me in the best bike shape I've been in. I rode hard today on the mt. bike and beat my pr on my favorite 20 mile 15 miles of dirt, 5 miles blacktop course by 3 1/2 minutes. It took 1:09 and averaged 17.4 MPH. For me that wouldn"t be to bad pace for a mt. bike on a paved course with that many hills. My HR ave. was 150 for the first 5 miles and I kept the ave. at 164 for the rest of the ride as high as 173 on a couple of hills. Hopfully this type of workout will  keep my V02 max from disapearing to much. 1 more mile cooldown.

    I took my son bowhunting this morning. We hiked about 4 miles. My hamy seamed to handel the hiking ok. I noticed it a bit when stepping over logs. After I got home I ran 3 miles with one walk break. I couldn't go quite as fast as yesterday without discomfort in the leg. 9:30 pace.

    PM  we went back out elk hunting for the evening and hiked about another 4 miles a lot being on pretty steep rugged terrain. All the hiking today should be some good cross training and wasn't to tough on the hamstring but I needed to be very carefull. By the time I got back I was glad to be finished as it was starting to ache a bit but it feels ok now. Hopfully after resting it sunday I'll be ready for a little better run on Monday.