Fantastic! Better late than never...
I made it home from Pittsburgh no problem Friday morning, was good to be back after missing the holiday. A big plate of turkey and all the fixings was waiting so nobody had to suffer the consequences. Aside from a couple 1-2 day trips, my schedule is pretty free for the next 2.5 weeks which will be a nice break. Hopefully I can establish some running continuity for the first time in a while and get this train headed in the right direction.
I got in the pool Friday afternoon for 45 minutes, didn’t feel a thing in my calf. A great workout which of course got me thinking (never a good thing). I had planned on going for an hour, but changed that and decided to cut it short at 45 mins, then put on the shoes and see if I had miraculously been healed and could still sneak down to Delaware tomorrow morning and race with my Greater Philly teammates. I hit the roads for about 1.5 miles – still felt the knot but it wasn’t as bad as it had been in Pittsburgh. Hmmmm….
As I think I wrote sometime last year, I never saw a race I didn’t like, and have jumped in more than a few that didn’t really make much sense. This was definitely the case, and in hindsight I can’t believe that I let the decision to go/not to go come down to whether or not the XC spikes I ordered arrived at the house or not. Thank God I didn’t get free overnight shipping, for they were not there when I got back and I took that as the tie-breaking sign that it just wasn’t in the cards. Looking back it would have been really stupid to run so in the end I’m glad it worked out the way it did. The race was going to determine the USATF Mid-Atlantic Off-Road championship and I was really hoping to help the fellows out, but it sounded like they did just fine without me so hopefully the final tally worked out in their favor and they brought home the title. I am still in one piece (which would not have been guaranteed if I had run), a little disappointed but those are the breaks…
In line with my current plan, I spent both Saturday and Sunday back in the local HydroWorx unit for long (1 hour) runs. Leg feels great in the warm water, don’t know if it is the reduced impact that is keeping it from tightening up, but whatever the reason it is allowing me to hopefully finally start to accumulate a little mileage on my legs. I can still find the sore spot when I massage it afterwards so I know the issue is still there. I hope to get seen by “my guy” in the next day or two and will hopefully get a diagnosis on the problem, but either way I plan on sticking with the underwater treadmill training for the next week or so to just “get right”. I have no intention on running any early season indoor track this year so I’m not in a hurry to be race-ready. Sooner or later I’m going to need to sit down and map out the goals/priorities/schedule for next year – after the long grind of 2011 I think some “change of scenery” is in the cards. I got my invitation for the 2012 Hartshorne Mile the other day so that will be the first benchmark race that I will have to make a call on (Jan 21), sure there will be more. I don’t know if I will (or want to) be ready that early or not, but I do think the 1500/mile will be the theme of 2012. First things first though – get back to fun, pain-free running which will hopefully allow me to eke one more season out of these old bones…
