Week 10 - "Active Rest"

Thursday, January 28, 2010
The first run this week (following Saturday's 6 mile jaunt) brought back some painful memories of my initial year of cross country in high school. The first signs of shin splints arose with a dull pain along the front of my lower legs. This motivated me to take a brief break from pounding the streets. After all, I have been running consistently now for 2 months after not putting in any real mileage for at least 7 years. Rather than just let myself lose all the cardiovascular progress made in previous months, I increased other forms of lower impact endurance training and core exercises. My planned 8 miler was nixed, and I am not sure if I will run next weekend either. Choosing not to run at this stage has been more difficult than all the mileage I have put in so far.

In addition to the active rest, I went out and bought a garbage can just large enough for me to soak my legs in. My intention is to fill the container with ice and water, then dunk my legs in there for 15 minutes after long runs. This was a daily routine for me in college, but instead of a trash can we did have a nice stainless steel tub with a circulating pump. I will be increasing time spent stretching following future runs as well. These measures should make the next 2.5 months of training a little easier.

-Jan 18: Killer cardio at the gym. 2 fast miles on the treadmill, 5000 meters rowing, and 8 miles (20 min) on upright bike.

-Jan 19: 20 more minutes on bike, rowed 2000 meters, crunches, sidebends, pullups.

-Jan 20: 30 minutes on bike, 12 minutes interval training on elliptical.

-Jan 22: Rowed 5000 meters, 12 minutes interval training on elliptical, pullups, bench press, crunches.

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