Tuesday Recovery Run
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
It's Tuesday, a work at home day and a day for a lunch run. Or is it?
I've been trying to pay attention to what more experienced runners say lately, because it has turned out that they were right about several things I didn't want to hear in the past. A couple of people have told me I should have three days off after my PR fast 5K, which would make the first run tomorrow. One said the rule of thumb is one day off per mile raced; the other spoke from his own experience as an older runner.
Coming from two people who don't know each other, I gave serious thought to not running today. But I don't have time for a run tomorrow, I have the time today. So I compromised. I decided to run today, and keep it an easy run. Start slow, and only run at a pace that feels good.
At noon it was 48° F on my porch, and there was sunshine . . . and a 20 mph wind from the west. The wind had been northerly earlier in the day, and there had been showers in the early morning. Absent the wind, it would have been shorts and tee shirt running weather; I settled on a light weight long sleeve compression shirt that I wouldn't wear in warm weather.
I set out to run without a clear idea of what route I would do. Before I'd gone a half mile, I decided to start on the route of my fairly flat 5K, adding distance toward the end if I felt good. The idea was that I get faster after I hit the little hills, so take the little hills out of the route and see if I can hold to a slower pace.
That seemed to work out okay. I loafed along at what felt like a home run jog, and RunKeeper reported a fairly even pace for a lunch run with minimal warmup. Got near the end, and felt good enough to add distance so I could run 30 minutes. Held to the discipline of stopping right at 30 minutes, because I really don't want to overdo things today.
RunKeeper reported the effort as 3.99 miles in 29:59, for an average pace of 7:31 per mile. I was looking at the timer when deciding when to push stop; if I'd noticed the distance five seconds sooner, I would have run a few more seconds to make it come out to four miles even. Oh, well, close enough. The mile splits were 7:37, 7:32, 7:27, and 7:29. The strategy of avoiding hills to keep from accelerating seems to have worked.
Body part inventory: The sore calf from Saturday's race didn't bother me this morning, but it reminded me of its existence early in today's run. It's not as bad now as it was Sunday, so that's okay. My right hip abductor started bothering me a little on Sunday after Saturday's race, and was still a minor concern before running; that went away after the run. Four hours later, I realized I forgot to put ice on my feet. I never noticed the lack, so that's good news.
Eight hours after the run, it's looking like a good recovery run. I expect to be able to run normally Thursday noon, which would mean a bit faster and running about 4.3 miles. If that goes as expected, I'll be out of recovery mode and into training mode. Next training goal: build my base and long distance so I can run a 10K on Thanksgiving Day.