A Mile A Day

1

I think I need to back off a bit maybe (Read 86 times)

jeffdonahue


    My runs SUCK lately. I have joint pains, muscle pains and aches whenever I start running. I tend to loosen up after a few miles but it is getting to the point that I dont even want to run sometimes because the first few miles feel like such utter crap. Dont get me wrong I still love to run, I just cant figure out what is going wrong here. I am up to just over 50 miles a week, but I built it up pretty slowly over the last few months. I didnt really jump up quickly in mileage. I may need new sneakers so I am going to go get a new pair tomorrow and see if that helps. Part of it might be not so much the miles, but the allocation of the miles. When i was running 50 miles a week last summer those were with one long run on Sundays of 16-20 miles (marathon training) but all the rest of the miles were spread out in smaller chunks and I typically had 2 days a week that I was only running 1.5-2.5 miles as my rest days. Now I am running the 50 miles with no "rest" days of shorter mileage, but no Long run either. So each day I am running between 5-11 miles - sometimes broken up into doubles. So I think instead of trying to hit the 55 miles I was going for this week, which would include a 3 mile run today at lunch and a 5 miler tomorrow and then 8 on Sunday, I think I am going to skip the run at lunch and just do 1-2 easy miles tomorrow morning and then see how I feel on Sunday. Maybe I will try for a longer run (10ish) if I feel better. Then I want to maybe revamp my workouts back to what I was doing last year with the two rest (1-2mile) days and a regular long run on Sundays. The rest of the mileage during the week I might keep to normal one a day runs. My legs feel fine right now, but starting out today just sucked. I think I might need rest. I did have a goal of reaching a 100 mile week this year, but that may have to be negged for the time being. I think my body might need those two lower mileage days, and 100 miles a week just cant be reached with two days of only 2 miles each. Just griping after a bad run this morning and trying to figure out how to keep going. Thanks for listening/reading. Jeff
      Looking at your log, one thing that stuck out to me is over the last 10+ weeks you seem to increase mileage every week. However, last summer you would have a big week followed by cutting back. Maybe that is something to think about? My graph (Eric's log is great for this type of thing)
      Trent


      Good Bad & The Monkey

        Yeah, you have not had a low milage week in 2009. Take a 30 mile week.
        jeffdonahue


          Thanks guys. That was kind of my idea as well. I think next week I will back off to around 30 miles with a few 1 milers in there to really rest the legs and see if that helps. I have just been so focused on my mileage goals for this year - gettign to a 100 mile week and reaching 2000 for the year that I may have been too gung-ho on not taking a rest week. I'll check back in here at the end of next week to see if the legs feel better. Thanks again Jeff
          jeffdonahue


            Here comes my low mileage week. I just did my third one mile day in a row, then will have 4-6 milers through Friday, another one miler on Saturday and a ten miler on Sunday. I must say that I think the rest might be doing some good - when I got the treadmill this morning (because we had another 5 inches of snow on the ground when I got up today) I didnt feel the fatigue in my legs that I have been feeling at the beginning of runs lately.