Typical Me

Yesterday, as I was lacing up my New Balanace Minimus shoes I prayed for a running miracle. The past two days had been a dreadful slog through two 5 milers and I was really wishing for a change in luck. I had fuelled properly, drank enough water, ate enough protein, but my legs kept yelling at me to take a walk break, and when that would get too painful, I would run, which felt bettter for a while, then walking would be better. Needless to say it was very frustrating. I can't say any one thing was wrong; my legs would tighten up then relax, my feet would have a weird pain that would disappear, my ankle would get stiff. Ugh, just miserable. Some runners (and the smart ones) probably would have taken this as a sign and taken a couple of days off. Me? Not so much, which is why I found myself lacing up for a 6 miler, praying for happy legs as I headed out into a rain storm. Yup. Typical me. The happy news is that my legs felt great, better than they had in, well, days. Whew. The rain storm hadn't fully developed yet so the weather was manageable, although really really windy. I took my time and was grateful for every pain-free/stiffness-free step. I know what's going on with my legs. I'm a wee bit overtrained at the moment so I've decided to scale back my training to the 50 miler training plan in the book Relentless Forward Progress. I've run long enough now that I know the signs; sluggish legs, unusual tiredness, loss of motivation..they are all there so one thing or another needs to change to re-fresh my training. I still have 2.5 months before Wasskally Wrabbit, so I'm comfortable with my decision. I'm taking solice in the fact that I'm still training more miles than I did last year, and even more than for the previous 50k, so I should still be capable of running my goal pace in May. Today I've got a nice little 8 miler to do, which I hope to squeeze in between work and going out to dinner for Valentine's Day. We do our gifts first thing in the morning (everyone gets a surprise) so now the evening can be more relaxed and full of good food and too many chocolates. Happy Valentine's Day!