Distance: 18 miles
Time: 2 hours 15 minutes
Comments: A very limited week due to my ongoing battle with overtraining. I went out only when I felt pretty good and cut the runs short the instant they felt at all uncomfortable.
As a result I only got in two four-mile runs during the week, a substantially shortened long run and a funsies race to top it off. Not bad, overall.
The achyness from running the long miles of the last month has lasted much much longer than I expected. I'm becoming very nervous about the ability of my legs to bounce back in time for the marathon.
Despite that, I clearly have the strength in the legs for the effort. I've even noticed the muscle definition has become substantially pronounced in the past few weeks.
With just two weeks until the race I'm starting to feel a bit of anxiety about the thing. Every time I go back through the past times and future projections I get reminded how close a thing this is going to be for me.
This week I plan on doing a few low-impact runs, maybe one tempo run and a not-terribly-long run on saturday. Mostly, the goal this week is rest and recovery. My sister and I might drive the route at some point to get a look at the geography of the thing as well.
My training focus for the week will, instead, be more on nutrition. I need to be piling up the carbs and nutrients big time now my body is using them as fast as I consume them. I'll be trying to get regular meals as well as mid-meal snacks that work toward this.
A lot of running guides I've run across warn about the taper week weight gain - something I don't think is much of an issue for me.
Injury update: The calf issues seem to have ceded to the background but two very worrisome issues remain. The first is the ache in my left hip that seems to be connected with the upper quads. I find myself favoring it a lot around the house and when I shift gears in the truck it is tough to lift the leg. It seems to ease up after I start running but that's not very reassuring.
The other problem is the pain on the outside of my right knee when I get into the run. I cut short my long run due to this and it was an issue during my race. My masseuse said there was a lot of tightness up the outside of the leg, particularly focused on the muscles supporting the knee. My hope is rest and another session will make progress to resolving this issue at least.