Wheeler Farm Loops

AM - 8 miles around the harbor. Stayed close to my hotel just in case I needed to stop. Not exactly the 25 miler at Balboa Park that I had planned for today. Quad feels better but I'm still a little worried. This is a bad time to have something flare up, because the next 3 weeks are arguably the most important. I'd rather have something come up a week before a marathon rather than a month out, when there is still a lot of work to be done. But, I can't change anything... Just have to take what my body gives me and make sure I'm very objective about what I do the next couple days.

PM - It took all day to get back home from San Diego. We started out descent to SLC, and then the airport closed! So we had to land in Provo and sat there on the runway for like 3.5 hours. They didn't even have people working at the Provo airport to de-ice the plane. I'm pretty burnt on traveling after these last couple days. 

AM - 8 miles up to work in the snow. I think the road conditions were actually worse than the big storm from a few weeks ago. I passed about a dozen cars going up Wakara.

PM - 30 minutes pool running. 

It was a big weekend for really fast running. Galen Rupp ran a 3:50 mile! (#5 all-time indoors). Mary Cain broke the high school record for the mile (by 6 seconds!!! 4:32!!!). Duane Solomon (Saucony) broke the 600m American Record. Over at the Dubai Marathon, 5 guys broke 2:05 in the same race. And the field for London was released... a PR of 2:05:15 would get you seeded 10th there.

AM - 8 miles up to work. Andrea joined me for the first couple miles. We agreed that we've never used our trail shoes as much as we have this winter so far. At least they are good for something!

PM - 30 minutes pool running w/ Andrea. 

I'm going to continue w/ running to work (easily) in the mornings and then taking the bus down to the gym and getting in the pool in the afternoons for the whole week. I think we've figured out the etiology of how I (probably) strained my quad, and what to do about it. For a variety of reasons (which I supposed I could get into later when I have more time), I'm not going to do any cross-training that isn't running-motion specific. I'm also not going to just take a bunch of time off, because if I've learned anything from Andrea's struggles, its that a muscle that heals in the wrong position leads to way bigger problems than a muscle that heals a little bit slower. I'm just going to skip a handful of workouts / long runs, and maybe skip racing the 10K next weekend, but I think I can get back to full health without a gigantic loss of fitness if I follow the semi-conservative route.

AM - 8 miles around our neighborhood in the snow.

Then I drove to work, because I was out of food and clean clothes. Bad idea. It took 75 minutes to get here - I've gotten here faster running through a foot of snow! Its been snowing pretty consistently since about the week before Christmas, you would think drivers would have figured out how to handle these conditions by now. Nope, lets just crash into things all over the place!

PM - 30 minutes pool running. Afterwards I realized the stairs leading into the pool were a good place to do calf dips/raises, so I did a bunch of those. Guess that should be added to the pool routine from now on. 

AM - 10.5 miles up to work.

PM - 2 miles w/ some accelerations + 15 minutes pool running. 

I almost forgot (good thing for Facebook)... today is Jesse James' birthday!

AM - 11.5 miles up to work. Starting to get a little sick, felt it coming on yesterday. Might as well just get all this stuff out of the way at once.

PM - 4.5 miles down to SHP. Met Andrea along the way. 

Lots of good cross / indoor track action this weekend - USA XC Championships (webcast on Runnerspace... women's 8K at noon, men's 12K at 12:45) and New Balance Grand Prix (webcast on ESPN3... the mile/2mi/3K start at 4:40pm, Utah time).

AM - 14 miles. 4.5 mi warmup w/ 2.5 miles @ 6:10 pace (Andrea's tempo), then 8 Mile AT Tempo in 41:44 (5:13/mile avg), 1.5 cooldown straight home and right into the ice bucket.

Woke up feeling sicker than yesterday (HR pushing 50, it doesn't even get that high the morning after a marathon), but the weather is great and I knew I needed to test out the leg. Andrea and I warmed up together and I ran alongside for her tempo. By the time that was over, I was feeling a lot better. I had low expectations for the workout, just wanted at least 3-4 but no more than 8 miles at a steady effort. If I felt any twinge in the quad, I'd stop immediately. Figured I'd ease into it and start at 5:30-5:40 pace... well, that didn't happen... my legs are very rested right now and I hit the mile quite a bit quicker than expected... then backed off a bit  Splits were 5:08, 5:17, 5:18, 5:14, 5:14, 5:14, 5:12, 5:06. Quad held up fine (I got a compression sleeve to keep pressure on my quad/hamstring, which might have helped). There was a temptation to keep going but I knew I should just cut it at 8 miles and then re-evaluate based on how I feel tomorrow. I'm not going to jump the gun and say I'm back to 100%... I have a lot of work to do in the next 3 weeks if I'm still going to get able to run a respectable marathon, but this leaves me cautiously optimistic. 

PM - 4 miles easy, then watched the NB Indoor meet. Mary Cain!!!