Ian who is a heck of an athlete, offers terrific advice and is truly a British gentleman recently complimented me by saying that “when the minor niggles come, which they always do, you take some action. Brilliant.” Well after tonight, he will put me up for a Nobel Prize. No injury or anything, but I tonight surveyed how I was feeling and took immediate and decisive action.
Thursday night tempo was in the mix. Before I get into it, I want to recall how I felt during my last run … on Tuesday. I ran well, but it took more effort than most interval sessions. I harkened back to last week’s number of intense progression runs as the potential culprit. This Wednesday was a rest day, but I slept terribly on Tuesday night. I slept better Wednesday night and with the tempo scheduled at 7pm Thursday, I felt that was plenty of time to recharge, rest the quad, etc.
Fast forward to today … I was okay for most of the morning, but then as the day wore on I become more sluggish. I was slightly worried as I was getting dressed for the 4-mile tempo, but figured I’d take it easy for the first 3 miles and then punch it for the final mile. My 1.6 mile warm up felt really good, so I buried any lingering doubts. The plan was to go out at HM pace (goal – 7:30). The first mile felt okay (7:24), although not as easy as I hoped. As usual, a couple of folks punched it early, but it was subtle because I was hanging with one of them. Then I glanced down at my watch at mile 2 and saw a 7:04 pace. Annoying. At this point, I was definitely working too hard for the plan. It was at about 2.5 miles when a flash of last week’s multiple progression runs came across my mind. I then realized that I was overtraining and at risk of completely blowing the 10k on April 3rd. With about a mile to go and the point where I was supposed to hit it hard, I decided to shut it down. I stopped. No aches. No pains. Probably a little overheated (wearing tights in warmish weather), but no overt signs of distress. I wasn’t upset at all. I’m glad the revelation came tonight. I’ve been busting my tail and I need to accept that there are consequences to doing so.
It’s ironic that before we started the tempo I was speaking with a teammate, who is also racing the 10k and said he had no plans going hard tonight and ideally you should begin tapering 10 days before a race. Well … he was the one who punched the pace at mile 2 (which is cool – he’s talented), but that taper thing stuck in my head. I normally rest enough week-to-week, but last week I really did push it. Also, I remember that feeling during the last 800m of the Coogan’s 5k when I intended to hit it, but had nothing left. I was tired. Therefore, not only am I tapering for this 10k, I’m starting now. My body is tired and it needs to get right.