After a key insight from a couple of you (see below) helped me get over my HM hurt, I had a good week of running capped by a really positive race experience this morning. The Trolley Run is a point-to-point, mostly downhill 4-miler with about 5,000 runners. Rather than run it all-out, I used it to test out what I’d learned from my past couple of race experiences. During my recent tempo work I realized I was maintaining my breathing at regular-run intensity for well over a mile (4/4 if you’re counting). But in races I ALWAYS got to tempo intensity (3/3 breathing) as quickly as I could, thinking “hey it’s just tempo pace.” I tried this at the half marathon and a mind-body freakout was the result. Only when I calmed down to regular (4/4) intensity was I able to turn on the guns and finish strong. So what I aimed to do today is start slow in the first place, hold myself to regular run intensity for at least a mile, maybe a little longer, ease slowly into higher (3/3) gear, and then ratchet it up to race intensity. Long story short: My miles were 6:04, 5:43, 5:46, and 5:52 for a 23:25 finish. I think I would up running at 97-98% intensity; if I were running a HM I would maintain my first-mile intensity probably for 3 miles and that would still give me 10 miles to empty the tank.
RF reader wrote:
old guy II wrote:
KC, my experience has been that it has almost always been upper hamstring attachment causing that pain. Sadly, at our age it usually takes a long time to go away.
And this could be due to tightness on hip flexor. When my glute hurts (like after long hours of driving), the first thing I try is stretching my hip flexor.
RF and OGII, thanks for this! That instantly made sense to me, and I realized it had been a month since I’d done any rope stretching. A long stretching session on Wednesday calmed my right leg down and today it was at near 100%.