AM: Ran with Morgan again, I rolled out yesterday for the first time in forever and it was crazy the difference it made for my legs. My range of motion has improved drastically and I could run so much easier. Welp, now I’ve again learned the importance of rolling out and recovery :) Anyways, I felt like I could go 6 or 7 miles easily. Unfortunately I was short on time because I had to get to work. Morgan went 4 with me then I added as much as I could after. Bonus- no knee pain! But I’m sooo sore from weights yesterday especially my quads, which is sad because it was only body weight haha
PM: Weights was mostly tissue work today to help recover and loosen any knots. Ohhhh flip it hurt so bad. First off, sore muscles. Especially quads. Well, the PVC pipe always hurts so I was prepared for that, as well as the golf ball and lacrosse ball. But then it was these quad and adductor smashes where you get the 45 lb bar from the rack and hook it in this thing so it can be moved around and have one end up a bit off of the ground. Then you put 20 lbs on the other end and put the end of the bar on top of your thigh and roll it up and down. Ohh my gosh I was in so much pain. My quads could hardly handle it, I had to keep lifting the bar up just a bit so it wasn’t quite as painful. I lasted 2 minutes on my right leg before taking 10 lbs off, it still hurt like crazy so after another minute I took off 5 more lbs and finished the 4 minutes. Still hurt terribly but it wasn’t quite as unbearable as before. I kept it at 5 lbs on the bar. The adductor one wasn’t nearly as bad. My quads were so tight and sore. Still sore but not as tight. Ended up having to cut the last 10ish minutes because I had somewhere to be.
I also went in and talked to Paul today just to catch up. I wanted to especially since he’s the one that walked me over to CAPS twice and cared enough to know something was wrong, even though I never admitted to him that I had been suicidal or was depressed. He just knew. Anyways, I asked him how many miles I should shoot for and I was surprised with his answer. He said not to worry about it and just do what I can, not to push it if it feels like too much. Instead of feeling pressured to hit a certain amount of miles a week I should run at what my body feels good doing. And that if I’m dreading the high mile week I feel I should hit, not to worry about it and go a shorter distance.
He also said that I shouldn’t feel pressured to hit a certain time, that he wants me to have fun with running and not dread it so much. He said not to be so fixated on breaking 5:00 in the mile for example and be so discouraged about not being able to hit it. Instead go out and have fun, enjoy running and take the pressure off. He said he doesn’t care if I run 5:20 or even 6:00 in the mile as long as I’m enjoying it. And then if racing still gets me down, he said I could even decide not to compete and just train with the team. I don’t plan on that haha, but I didn’t realize how much pressure I’d been putting on myself until he said that. I haven’t been running for fun, I’ve been running to measure up and prove to Coach that I’m worth the investment he put in me. And that got me down a lot because no matter how I ran I always felt like I never measured up. Anyways, going at it with the mindset that I’m here to enjoy myself and see how much I can improve has helped me to relax and I feel excited for the first time in so long to see what I can do. To run because I want to not because I have to. I haven’t felt like that since high school.
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