Weekly Report 3- Recovery

I'm still quite content with my 6 mile run last week and wanted to focus more on strength and recovery than I did distance.

Recovery... funny word when you're an athlete.  

When I was swimming in college we would get so excited about recovery days and then remember that recovery was more so active recovery. We still had a few sets, some of which were definitely not easy by any sense of the word, but it made sure we stayed in shape while not completely exhausting ourselves.

While I may not be swimming anymore, I'm still following some of the habits I picked up as a swimmer.  So that's why I focused on strength and even though I had a recovery week, I didn't just sit around.  I can actually say I'm sore, but it's more so my shoulder and chest region due to some time in the gym, including time on the rowing machine.

When I look back at the last two weeks I like the routine I'm setting up.  Pushing myself farther and farther one week and then working on strength the next week.  I need to work on both endurance and strength if I'm going to achieve the lofty goals I've given myself and I honestly think these alternating weeks may be the best.  Especially once summer and the humidity return in full force...

Weekly Report 1- What A Mess

Life has been catching up to me again, and catching up to my muscles and joints.  Where I was tired last week, now things are just starting to hurt or I'm just feeling off.  Then there were other complications like weather... lots and lots of wind this week.

The day I was planning on doing one of my shorter maintenance runs the wind decided that it wanted to wreak havoc with everything.  I work outside and I was barely able to stay on meet feet at times it seemed.  That just turned me off from running because I really didn't need a 5k resistance run.  I realized very quickly that while I love running in rain and thunderstorms, enjoy cold runs, and will tolerate hot runs... windy runs I just don't do.

So once postponing my run, my social life decided to actually have plans for once which means it took me a few days to get back into a workout.  Finally got on a treadmill yesterday which was interesting.  I forgot the challenges that go along with running on treadmills, finding my pace, keeping my pace, etc... I got the hang of it, but it didn't make my knee all that happy.  Or my ankles for that matter, but that was my fault as I wore my old running shoes which don't have the best ankle support.

Today I got up and started on my run.  I couldn't decide if I wanted a maintenance run or a long run so I just starting.  Very quickly I realized a few things... My muscles were sore from the treadmill run, but my pace was faster than ever before.  Of course just over a mile in I also rolled my good ankle.  The athlete in me kept running, but my brain reminded me not to push it because the last thing I need is old ankle injuries mixing with new ones and causing issues.

So I guess the theme this week was trying to cause issues when last week I was overcoming them.  I'll take these hard weeks though, because they make the good weeks that much better.