Quantity vs. Quality
For the second week in a row, training has gone well. Between the knee, achilles tendon, and plantar fasciitis, they make themselves known every once in a while, but not enough to truly cause pain or affect how I run.
I’ve backed off slightly on strength training volume. It was getting to the point that I spent more hours/day doing floor exercises than running, which probably isn’t the balance I’m looking for. As a result, I was probably too tired to run with proper form, which not only could’ve been contributing to the injuries, but simply made running miserable. By doing less strength training, my running has improved, and as a result of attempting less, I'm following through with more.
Running in the afternoon hasn’t been as bad as expected. While it occasionally hits 30 °C, afternoons are less humid than mornings, so the difficulty isn’t much higher. And I simply don’t like running at night, so switching back to running in the sunshine is a welcome change.
After three consecutive weekends with a bad long run, the past three in a row have all been solid. In all cases, the pace has been more than a full minute/km faster than the target pace for the first half of the race. And at 70 km, the most recent long run was nearly the same distance.
The longest training run, 50 miles, is planned for two weeks from now, meaning there are only two truly long training runs left on the schedule. Starting to see the end in sight. Kind of like the sound of that. I’m finally excited about running again, doubly so about the race.
June
