I’m enjoying my first cup of coffee this morning wondering how I can be sooooo sore. It’s like I spent a day in the gym lifting weights! My back, quads and shoulders are screaming at me today. No – I’m not getting a cold or flu. The pain I’m feeling today is that “good” pain. As in the “no pain no gain” type of pain. I’m just wondering why. Yesterday’s run was kind of normal. Nine mile aerobic run on my now normal Corona del Mar to Crystal Cove route.
I ran by heart rate. When I got back and checked my data – heart rate looked fine – 81% of max. But I noticed that my pace was 30 seconds slower than Tuesday’s pace on the same route- 10:16 versus 9:45. Hmm. Let’s see here. Fast on Tuesday. Heart rate running away on Wednesday. Slow on Thursday. Sore on Friday. I’m glad today is a rest day!
Here’s what I think is happening. I’m exercising at a rate that it foreign to my body. Perhaps even pushing a little too hard. Three out of the last four months have been 140 miles or more, and the one month that didn’t hit 140 was 136. Right now I’m clipping along at a 180 mile pace for this month. Last week’s 43 miles burned about 6000 calories. This week’s 44 miles will do the same. I’ve dropped about 3 pounds in the last two weeks. That pretty much means that I’m not even close to putting back in what I’m using. If I do this too long I’ll break. It’s still early in this training cycle. I think it’s time to slow down a little. Run my recovery and general aerobic runs at a little lower heart rate for a couple of weeks.
When I think about where I was just a few months ago, it is really amazing what this old fart can do. It just sucks getting old!
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