Week 137: 7 hours 21 minutes in 6 runs, with a long run of 2 hr 15 min (14+ miles I guess).
Gave a pint on the Wednesday of week 136 and completely fell apart at the end of my long run that week. So took one day off this week and ran the others easy. Finally recovered enough to have a decent long run two days ago.
Dusted off my heart monitor yesterday and found I have been running my easy runs too hard (it is ever so), especially that longish grade on the homeward leg.
One last touch on the weight lifting topic: I'm all for it as long as it is targeted and takes into account the other training. For me the gray zone is around 45 mpw, above 50 mpw I have to cut it completely. lucKY2b, I agree with everything you wrote, I could have written that myself, except of course my running is different.
Shoes! Shoes! Shoes!
Not just the running kind, but all the other kinds as well. (mopak's heel is prompting me to write on this topic.) I'm pretty much down to just three models of shoe, but with the recent weather I had some chances to wear some others from the closet and I thought I would relate.
1. For running I am wearing only the tried and true stability trainers that I have been in since 2004. They have been redesigned seven times since then, but are still working well. They are about to go through an even more radical redesign, I'm a little worried that they will not work so well after that. For now, back in the box are the spikes, the flats, the trail shoes, and the two pairs of stability trainers by a competing manufacturer. The idea behind wearing just one running shoe is to remove one unknown from the equation.
2. For work I am wearing a basic black "walker" put out by one of the major running shoe manufacturers. They are technically disallowed by company policy, but my manager agrees that I need them for medical reasons. I first bought these in 2012 when battling PF, I was willing to try anything. (I recently gave a pair to my uncle, he said he's never worn a more comfortable shoe in his life. Then again, his wife buys most of his shoes used at $5.00/pair so his endorsement might not mean much.) The idea behind the walker is that it's by the same people who make my stability shoe, their heel cup is very comfortable and the arch support is perfect for my foot.
3. For everything else I am wearing so-called "recovery sandals". Think of these as flip-flops with orthotics -- very expensive flip-flops. I have three pairs, one for around the house, one for outside, and a third pair I keep in the car. I get a lot of comments wearing these outside in the cold and snow! The idea behind the sandals is that with no heel at all, there is no pressure on the achilles. I got my first pair for post-long run recovery, and have just started wearing them more and more. I wish I could wear them at work.
Anyway, three weeks ago we had that bitter cold spell, on two of those days I varied my footwear and my feet really suffered.
The first day, I wore heavy work boots in, and switched to the emergency dress shoes that I keep in the desk drawer. These have actually been parked there since I switched to the walkers in 2012. They were fairly new at the time (being the second pair of the same model I had been wearing), too new to throw away, I figured they would make perfect emergency shoes. OMG, how did I ever wear these? When I stood up to go get a cup of coffee, they were instantly painful, and after just a few minutes of walking in them all I could think of was getting off my feet.
So, how did I in fact wear these before? Was it just stupidity? Looking back at my training log, 2010 was my first full year of marathon training, and 2011 was my first year of really high mileage. I bought my first pair of these dress shoes sometime in 2011, and all I can think, now, is that I must have put my hurting feet down to the mileage and not the dress shoes. By 2012 I had PF and when I changed literally anything and everything that might possibly help, luckily that included these shoes.
The second day, I again wore the heavy work boots in, and this time I kept them on all day. Also technically disallowed by company policy, but somehow I managed to dodge the fashion police. Usually I would wear these boots only when shoveling snow or such, say an hour at a time maximum. About halfway through the business day my left achilles began to get very sore, and when the day was over I couldn't even get my run in. (I bounced back quickly though and was able to resume running the next day.) It was my summertime agony revisited.
So let's recap the summertime. Marathon, short races, achilles tendinitis. Vacation trifecta of (1) running on soft sand, (2) sprinting on the dock, (3) bashing my heel on a boulder. Spent the rest of the vacation not running, but doing a lot of hiking instead. Wait a minute! My hiking boots are very similar construction to these work boots -- high ankle with full lacing. So what are the odds that while I thought I was "taking it easy" on my achilles by not running, in fact I was doing something just as bad if not worse? My left ankle was always sore during the hikes, but I expected that, in fact that's why I was hiking instead of running. Gah!!!
So there's my shoe adventure. I may be a little slow but I'm not stupid. I quickly bought a second pair of walkers to stash in the desk drawer for emergencies. There will be no third day.