Big Sur Marathon Training-Week 1

Well crap, it’s real huh, now that it’s in writing. 😜

This week went almost exactly like I planned.  Notice I said like I planned and not according to THE plan.

Plan-

Life

Monday 5 miles / PT exercise-  I couldn’t waste a perfectly good day off so I moved Wednesday’s 5 miles to Monday.  It just made more sense.  I also finally found the sluggish feeling I had been expecting to feel on Saturday’s and Sunday’s run.  Then again it has also been a while since I’ve run 3 days in a row.   Other than sluggish, it was a pretty solid 5 miles though.  Could have done without the buzzard spectators though.  Back off buddies.

Tuesday- Rest/ PT exercises.  Nailed it.  Work was crazy busy so that’s all I had the brain power for anyways.

Wednesday- 3.1 miles/ PT exercises  Slow, sore, treadmill miles. Man, my back was so not happy so I was really glad I switched Monday and Wednesday around.  I was also very surprised by how empty the gym was.  I had been expecting to find a crowd but instead I was able to find both a parking spot close to the gym and a treadmill easily.  What gives?  That is highly unusual for January 3.

Thursday- Physical Therapy   I had another session of lumbar traction, this time with increased tension.  Is that what it’s called?    While it felt good, I was super sore too.   I took easy the rest of the day, doc’s orders.

Friday- Rest If only that word was an accurate representation of how Friday’s actually go.  🤣

Saturday- 8.3 miles/ PT exercises First long run of training! Just to play things smart and to be nice to my back, I was keeping to my intervals of run 1 minute, walk 1 minute.  Also helped that my watch was set to that and I was too lazy to fix it.   My pace was keeping pretty steady in the mid 11 range, which I was more than fine with and my plan was to pick it up for a fast finish. Everything was working great up until mile 6.5.  Then I felt AND heard something pop on my back near my left shoulder-blade and came to a screeching halt.  Literally.  I was ripping off colorful words in multiple languages and probably sounded like I was screeching.   Are you freakin’ kidding me?  Now, this is unfortunately an injury that I am familiar with.   This is the 5th time it’s happened, first time while running though.  Usually, it leaves me with restricted mobility on my left side for 3-5 days, how the hell was I going to get back to my car let alone finish running??

I ran a pace that didn’t jostle me too much and stopped multiple times to stretch.  Stretching would have gone better without my Orange Mud pack on, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get it back on it I took it off.  I made it back to my car and stretched as best as I could before driving home.   Grrrr.

Sunday- Rest.  Damn shoulder.   Running actually seemed to help it a bit because it didn’t seem as bad today as it was the last time this happened.  Which oddly, was almost exactly a year ago.   So I rested and worked on some deep stretching with my foam roller.

16.42 miles.   Other than the damn shoulder, the miles are exactly how I thought this week was going to go, so yay for that!   I had originally thought about making up Thursday’s run on Sunday but again, shoulder.

How was your week?