I thought I'd dip into this thread/community. Really I need to join in. I'm 59 at this point and hanging in there.
A very good week in some ways.
M: 5 @ 9:34
Tu: travel day
W: 8.5 @ 9:07 w/some faster stuff
Th: 3.5 @ 10:22
F: 9 @ 8:49 w/last three @ 8:15, 8:16, 8:04 (av HR 81.5%....a hard threshold run towards the end)
S: 2.6, very slow
Su: 9 @ 10:18 (pitifully slow)
I've been battling sore knees for a while. Two weeks ago I walked the last mile and a half of a "long run" that started off as a planned 12-miler, faded to an 8-miler as I turned around at 4, and then devolved further into a 6.5 miler. Worst run of the previous three months.
I dug the one last 15 mg. Mobic that I'd stashed and downed it. The following week was incredible! I had great runs. But by last Sunday I was sore again. I took a day off.
This past week the good runs got even better. I felt like a runner again. 8:49 pace for 9 miles--three laps of Rockland Lake State Park in Congers, NY, where I grew up and where I took my first run, with my dad, in the summer of '72 after being inspired by Shorter winning the Oly marathon--just isn't what I could do a decade ago as a young 49 year old, but I felt fantastic.
So I expected to go out there this morning and lay it down again. And my legs were dead. And I suddenly figured out something that I've avoided figuring out until now: sometimes, after a long, hard run--which is what Friday's run was for me--I need two days of recovery, not one. I was an entirely different runner this morning than I was on Friday morning. The two 9 mile runs had nothing in common. Friday I was moving well within the first half mile and every successive mile felt as though something were opening up further. I was flying.
This morning I was dying on the vine. Same guy; same legs; same history. But the power plant just didn't have anything to give.
Still, I'm hopeful. Once you've flown again, once you've had that flying feeling, you'll do anything--or at least I'll do anything--to taste it again.
This past March I got the long run back out to 14 miles @ 8:45 pace and I ran a pair of 5Ks at 7:05 pace. Then, on July 1, a back blowout--the third in 24 months; one strain, two disc bulges--and no running for 7 weeks. So I've had three months of training since full deconditioning. I'm most of the way back. I'll take what I can get.
Good runs, everybody. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.