After a brief two-week experiment with miles in the 60's, this week I am back to fewer than 50 this week. Part of that is because I actually have a race this weekend and the marathon plan drops the miles pre-race, but it's also because I cut a run short and took an unscheduled day off.
It happened like this: Wednesday I was supposed to have 15 miles easy, but I went home at 11. I felt positively ill - hot, dehydrated, tired, and grumpy. I'm not sure what went wrong, but I ran a fever for the rest of the day and had a bad headache. Either my body was fighting some infection off, or I got overheated on the run. That's possible. It was in the 80's, lots of sun, later in the day than usual, and I didn't plan my water stops well. Whatever the reason, I looked at the slow miles I'd been running and decided to take a day off.
I ran short on Thursday but took Friday off completely. Hopefully, if the problem is too many miles too soon, backing down will cure it. I'll see how I feel once I return to higher miles and decide then if I want to cut back for the remainder of the plan. The reason I'm second guessing the miles is not just one bad run, but because I've noticed that all my "easy run" miles have been a lot slower than my easy runs normally are. If I run by effort I've been going much more slowly than I think I am when I try to run an easy pace, ever since I started this plan. Am I tired out? Or is this normal? My pace on Wednesday was close to 8 min/miles, and it felt like 7:45. Strange.
So anyway, that race I mentioned.
I looked at my marathon plan and on Sunday I had schedule a 10k or 15k race. Lo and behold, there's a 15k race in New Orleans on Sunday. So I had to do it! That's too coincidental to pass up! Besides the Four on the Fourth race I ran totally injured and out of shape, this will be my first race since injury, so I don't have high hopes. I'd love to keep my pace under 7 min/miles, but lately that has seemed really difficult, so we'll see.
Anyone else racing this weekend?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I would just go by the effort gauge...or a heart rate monitor. Pushing your body harder than feels 'right' is an easy way to overtrain or get hurt :( I hope your race goes wonderfully! No race for me...lots of running reassessment at the moment :)
ReplyDeleteI find as my wkly mileage increases, especially in the 55-70 mpw range, my slow days get slower. I don't fight this. My easy days are supposed to be easy pace, so that's what I do. if I run too hard on my easy day, I can't run my quality days at the level that I want or need to.
ReplyDeleteI use my garmin more often on my "slow" days than some of my fast days to be sure to run slow. but when I get into higher mileage, I don't have to monitor my slow days as much because my body automatically slows down.
so, for me, I would say what you are describing is totally normal. run easy and enjoy it !
I can see by your daily mile gadget that you ran sub 7 minute miles!! Congrats! Awesome pace, speedster!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Delete