Ups and Downs

Literally…life has them, great things can happen one day and you can be on top of the world and the next day a crash…but of course those aren’t the ups and downs I’m really talking about right now. The ups and downs I’m referencing have to do with my run last night with my training group at Hyland Park (oh and in response to a few queries, no I’m not doing a TNT thing, no way I’d be able to raise that kind of money, I’m training with the Minnesota Distance Runner’s Association fall marathon program). The plan called for 10 miles, but last time we ran there we were short with only 7.5, so I decided since I get there early anyway, I’d run 2 miles to warm up before the others got there…I was done with that almost an hour before the rest of the group was there and we were going to run but oh well. I got a good stretch in so that helped too. Group showed up and we were off…over hills upon hills…ups and downs, although nice thing is this is trails and some of that just feels so good. Weather didn’t feel too bad, was a threat of rain, but unfortunately it didn’t come, and by the end we were all drenched because the humidity was up enough. The end of the main run is over the top of the ski hill (yes, MN does have some skiing) and that at the end does kind of suck…it’s an up, slight down, more up, slight down and more and more up. But nice views when you run across the top. We got to the start, saw that we were at 7.5 again (but I was at 9.5 remember) and everyone said hey, let’s do a cool down lap around the lake (same lake I had warmed up on) and off we went…so I ended with 11.5 miles. I think it was a good workout. I got home too exhausted to eve think about eating. Ended up having some grapes and Trader Joe’s brand honey nut o’s so I would have something in me and crashed…I couldn’t even stay up to watch the swimming. Ah well.

On another note, my order from Amazon showed up. I paid $26 for a book called “The Plantar Fasciitis 5 Minute Solution”. It’s larger, large print and about 100 pages…2 of which go over the stretch for the PF that is supposed to help in 5 minutes a day (you do it 3 times a day and holds for 10 seconds 10 times so it takes 5 minutes total). I wish I could’ve spent half that and gotten just the stretch…of course if it helps I’ll say it was well worth it, and it got good reviews. The rest of the book talks about what PF is and how it comes on, studies etc…we’ll see. I also ordered a night splint. I’m not sure this one is going to do enough or not, I slept part of the night in it, and it was fine to sleep in, just not sure it was holding my foot enough, but I’ll try it a bit more and see if it works or not. I did take it off halfway through the night when I was trying really hard to get back to sleep after having woken up…and was of course exhausted this morning, but got up and went to the gym, only managed 20 minutes of strength though and the 30 on the bike were tough. I’m not running tonight, Wednesday has become my day off, but I might need to take another day off this week and have it be totally off. It’s been over 3 weeks since I had a total rest day I’ve realized (I don’t consider the strength training as tough and the biking is light too) and I think my body is rebelling, even though it doesn’t seem like it’s been that much as I certainly haven’t dropped any weight…next week is a fall back week and I’ll definitely go for the rest then, just hope I can get through the rest of this week. I’m so exhausted feeling and I think it might be some lack of sleep…wish I kept better records on my past sleep habits. I’m still freaking over my training a bit.

I think I'm going to go to bed shortly tonight to let my body relax...and tomorrow I'm only doing my afternoon run too. Hopefully that gives me some recovery.