4 weeks until the half marathon

I managed to get 30 miles in again this week and my legs are tired! My schedule wasn't ideal, it never really is. Life, weather, motivation, and fatigue cause me to switch all the time. So my ideal week (in miles is) 3-6-3-6-3-9-0. I've never run 6 days in a row and running Monday morning is really tough for me, so I miss at least one of those runs. This week, I got up at 5 something Wednesday and it started storming, then I felt like crap for some reason all day. Woke up at 5 something Thursday, checked the radar on my phone and yep, another storm so I went back to bed. Managed to run after work but cut it short because the humidity broke Friday and I took the afternoon off to do my long run so I could smoke a couple briskets Saturday. So this week was 0-6-0-3.5-11-3.5-6. Not too shabby (for me).

My legs are getting sore. I think I had some sort of bug Wednesday which made things a little worse. On my long run Friday, my legs actually started getting much more sore during the last 5 miles of my run. Usually they get sore after a run, not during. About a half hour out, I decided I would do my first ever ice bath when I got back. Yep, it was that bad. I got home, wobbled to the kitchen to drink a glass of water and a glass of milk with protein powder then started going upstairs with the ice box from our fridge. Cheryl was trying to show me the new faucet we are getting in 2 weeks and she was very excited, I was a hurting puppy and she could tell. I made my way upstairs, ran cold water in the tub up to about my hips, and dumped the ice in. I could have used more ice but it was cold enough. Stepping in was brutal, sitting down even more so, but after about a minute, my legs were numb and it wasn't so bad. I have Reynaud's and knew that my fingers would probably turn white with the rapid drop in body temp so I wore a shirt to try to stay a little warm. Well, the back if the shirt dropped in the water so while my legs were numb and fine, my back was freezing as the ice water wicked up the back of my shirt. I sat it the bath for a while and I think it helped. It took a good half hour to get warmed up. Lesson learned. For my next ice bath, I will take an old sweatshirt and cut it off, wear a hat, and maybe mittens.

The ice bath worked well enough to run a slow 5k Saturday. Sunday I was still sore but seemed to loosen up as I walked around. I read on BT that another way to recover is to do an easy recovery bike ride. The idea is to spin at a good cadence with very little strain. So I decided I would run my 10k training run then take a little spin.
It worked out great because I have neglected my mountain bike for two years since I started endurance sports. I've walked by my old bike covered with dust and cobb webs for too long so after my run, I cleaned her up, lubed the chain, and took of on a very slow recovery ride. I also used the opportunity to take pictures of my 11 mile run route. You didn't know you were so lucky :-).

I have miles and miles of paved trails with one of them right across the street from my house. I have a 2, 8, 11, 15, and 26 mile loop I can start from my house plus plenty of out and backs (of course). The trails are old rail lines and one still has an old water tower for the steam engines. They are fairly straight, fairly flat, and the trail people even tunneled under many of the main road crossings so the stopping is minimized.






Sorry about the formatting. It's not worth the extra time to make it look nicer.