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Week 317
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Salutations, 50+er's! Made it through to the end of the month, so June (plus the last two days in May) was the extent of my streak. Was hoping to keep it going, but almost as if to tell me that it'd had enough of this nonsense, my left knee started acting up Saturday morning. And with that, my streak unceremoniously ended and July 1st saw no running. So 6 days of running with 29.5 miles for this week:
Sun: 5.0 Mostly Easy (7:38/mi) a bit of effort on the last mile
Mon: 4.4 Easy Trails (8:43/mi)
Tue: 5.8 Intervals (2000,1600,800,400)8:22,6:31,3:14,83
Wed: 5.0 Easy Trails (8:34/mi)
Thu: 4.1 Easy-and-Moderate (7:40/mi) Third mile @6:51
Fri: 5.2 Easyish (7:46/mi)
Sat: Off, 32-Day Streak Ends (did walk 3 miles with my wife)
The intervals Tuesday were supposed to go 5,4,3,2,1 with 1 lap jog recovery and increasing speed with each rep, but during the 1200, it became evident that the 1-lap recovery prior didn't take, so I stopped at 800. There was then full recovery before running a fairly hard (but not all out) 400. I was pleased, nonetheless, because the volume of effort was still 4800m, which is more than I've done in quite a while at the track.
Legs felt dead Thursday, so I tried to inject some speed by accelerating through the 3rd mile (last half mile was sub-6:30 pace), which sometimes will get them out of their doldrums, but it didn't take, so I slogged that fourth mile home. Most the rest of the week was easy running.
Can't really say what brought on the knee issue, this isn't the first time this has happened. From time to time I just start getting quivering and cramping around the knee both just above and behind it and even extending to the upper calf. I spent a lot of the day, just trying to massage the muscles around the knee, but mostly, it just needs some rest. May be another day or two of walking before I get back to running, we'll see.
In a pleasant surprise, racedb (Dave) and his wife happened to stop overnight in Lexington en route to South Carolina, so I was happy to be able to meet up with them and share in a few craft beers at a couple of our burgeoning local breweries. There's plenty more where that came from, so maybe this coming December at Club Cross Nationals, anyone that wants to join in, we can scout out a few others. Hopefully, next time they'll procure better accommodations, lol.
It's sure nice to see some folks talking about upcoming challenges on the track; KP needs more company!
With the knee woes, and a general lack of enthusiasm for racing a 10K when it's uncomfortably humid (currently it looks like the 7:30am start will be about 70-71 degrees with about equal dew point), it's not looking promising for the Bluegrass 10000; I need to decide by the end of today when registration closes. With that, good luck to all those that are planning on toeing the line somewhere on this 4th of July.
All the Best!