Rut Roh

I made a pretty big mistake with my training yesterday.  I headed out for my long run and picked a hilly route...essentially doing constant hills for the almost 8 mile run.  I paid the price for it today with sore calves and tender shins.  Too much hill work, too soon is always rough on the legs. 

My friend and running partner and I were IM'ing at work this morning.  She was out of town for the weekend so I had been on my own for the long run.  We were recapping the weekend and I told her I had run from my house and it was hilly and that my legs were hurting.  Her response was simple and classic..."We said we wanted to do more hills." It was a true statement...we had talked about doing more hill work since our upcoming half marathon has a lot of hills in the second half of the race.  I guess sometimes in planning our training we forget about the pain that we have to go through in order to get stronger!

My other oops in my training last week was in taking care of my feet.  I have a nagging perma-blister.  It's a blister that I get on my heal and it will go away and then come back randomly.  I remember having the same blister around my half ironman time last year too.  The blister came back last week and I didn't treat it very well.  I skipped draining it since it was deep in the tissue.  Big mistake considering it bruised and blistered again during my run on Sunday.  I spoke to my coach tonight and he instructed me to drain the blister and then soak my foot in Epsom Salt.  He said that if I didn't get it healed it would just keep blistering and bruising deeper and deeper in the tissue and that would be bad.  It does feel and look a lot better after soaking it tonight so hopefully he is on to something!

Hopefully, after these recent missteps I can keep my training in line and moving forward.  I will be sleeping in my compression socks for sure to show my legs a little thanks for all their hard work going up and down those hills on Sunday! And even with the sore legs, I was able to get some mileage in tonight at speedwork.  I didn't do the complete workout but I did enough to remind myself that I can run faster and that I'll only get better as my endurance and fitness returns.