Unexpected

Happy Sunday!

Today has thrown up a couple of unexpected things and reminded me that although things don't always go the way that you want, getting something different can be just as good.

Before I get into that, a quick recap of my Saturday morning - massage day. I booked myself in to a local business as all the recommendations I had found were a bit too far away for my liking. I'm prepared to travel for quality but will avoid it if I can. The girl who was performing the massage seemed nice enough, looked at how I was moving and then got stuck into it.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I knew it would hurt. But I forgot just how much it hurts. By the time she had finished I was covered in sweat and had developed a huge knot in my shoulders from tensing up from the pain in my legs. It was awesome! I have real issues with my calves - that's where the pain has most recently been - so I had directed her to focus on my glutes and ITBs. I was worried that I had some kind of tear or bruising and therefore, having my calves massaged might make it worse. The masseuse ended up working on them (and this was most definintely the worst part of the torture massage session) but I am so glad she did. The pain I had when walking - gone! The pain I had when shuffling - gone! Hooray!!

Because I was feeling so much better, I headed off for a run this morning. As it turns out, running is still a bit beyond me - first running session after my shuffling warm up left me with the same calf pain. I wasn't going to let that stop me from being out there though. I shifted to a walk/shuffle combination and smashed (ahem) that out for an hour. While this was pretty disappointing - I want to run, dammit! - I did get to see a couple of unexpected things.

Unexpected thing 1:
Books in the wild

Someone had left a number of books tied to fences, on posts and on the ground for people to read. The bags they were in were for a website called bookcrossing.com which I know nothing about but looks like a book swapping site. As I am a MASSIVE book fan, I think it's a great idea.

Unexpected thing 2:
Peacock!!

Seriously, who would expect to see a peacock during a Sunday morning run shuffle?

Had I been actually running, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had noticed these things. So, today, I'm happy to have dodgy calves. Because I got to smile at the unexpected.

Thinking positive

I am very nervous about my still quite sore legs. This morning I got up and they felt good. I was pretty happy. But by the time I left home and headed for the train station they were not happy. By the time I had climbed the stairs on the rail overpass, they were even less happy. I've got an appointment for a massage on Saturday morning in the hope that releasing my ITB and glutes (and quite possibly my lower back) will take some pressure off. I'll put off my long run until Sunday.

And in non-running news, only 25 sleeps until...

OK, technically there's about 35 sleeps until New York but I don't have any pictures of Canada.
I. Can't. Wait.

Oh no!

Tonight I discovered that perhaps I went out a bit (a lot) too hard on Monday. Our session tonight was hill repeats, which I opted to not do and instead aimed for some steady pace laps with short recoveries between each lap. From lap one both legs were hurting. I knocked out three more in the hope that maybe I was mistaking muscle soreness for actual injury. No. Both legs are suffering from a relapse of shin splints with the left one waaaay sorer than the right.

I have had the ice packs out and quite possibly given myself frostbite on at least the left leg (hey, it doesn't hurt anymore!...and I can't feel anything). I'm praying that continued icing and no heels and some focussed stretching sorts this out pretty quickly. I can tell you right now that there's no way I'm managing 10km without a significant improvement. There's no way I'm managing more than 1km at the moment and that 1km would hurt like hell.

Monday night lactate stackers

At the risk of sounding very conceited, I totally ROCKED tonight! I finally got through a session completing the program as intended and more than that, I exceeded my expectations.

Lactate stackers involved a bit of a warm up then 6 sets of 1 minute at full pace, followed by 2 minutes recovery jogging with a 2 minute rest between sets. I so wanted to quit on the last set but punched it out and kept running on the recovery after the rest of the group had dropped to a walk. My goal is to improve on my 10km time and that's going to require running when I want to walk, so the more I practice the better.

I elevated myself from second slowest to third slowest of the group and was pretty close to keeping pace with a couple more people. This is even more exciting for me as I easily would have 15kg over the rest of the group. Imagine what I could do if my running recovery didn't include a bit too much ice cream?!

Weekend homework

I managed to drag out 8km this morning. I was supposed to go yesterday but 1) I didn't want to and 2) my legs were feeling not ready for it and 3) I didn't want to. I paid the price this morning by having to run in the rain - it wasn't really that bad and I felt so much more hardcore for doing it.
The run ended up being at an average of 7:30/km which put me at a total time of 1 hour. While dismally slow, this better than last week's effort so I'm happy about that.

Terrible traffic and tabata

Made it to running group late tonight which is annoying. For reasons I don't understand, traffic coming off the Monash was appalling. I skipped the Toorak Rd exit because it was banked so far back only to get stuck anyway. But, I made it eventually, and even though I missed the first couple of sets I still got to do at least half the workout. And something is surely better than nothing.
Our tabata workout was: 20 secs at 90%, 10 secs off, repeat 8 times. 3 minute recovery between sets.
Unfortunately, due to the dodgy legs I didn't really manage 90%. I did push myself for the first couple of sets but then started feelin twingy so pulled it right back for the remaining time. After I got home I made sure to pull out the foam roller and give both legs a good stretch. ow ow ow!
Feeling pretty good with the running still. Looking forward to a nice 8km long run on Saturday but even more, I'm looking forward to the two days rest before then!

Monday night intervals

Phew, am I tired.

I'm the second slowest in my Monday night group but I think I could almost be third slowest if I wasn't so worried about injuring myself. At least, that's what I tell myself.

Tonight was 5 x 150m intervals in three sets with 2 min recovery between sets. First set at 60%, second set at 70% and third set at 80%. I think I did three sets at about 65 - 70% pace. It was enough that I was feeling a bit nauseous by the end of both the second and third sets. Add the run to and from the oval and I think I covered about 6km tonight with just a little bit of hill shuffling included.

Looking forward to Wednesday to see if I can manage three runs in one week without injury! How exciting will that be?