Starting this week on a tangent – I had a dream last night that I ran the Boston Marathon in 2:59:07 – I was ecstatic! In my dream, the race went off without a hitch; effortless, smooth and uneventful. This is the opposite of any dreams I usually have about race day. The way race days typically unfold in my dreams (aka nightmares) could involve any of the following:
- Disaster strikes: I am late (by several hours) to the point where I am running across the start line as the race director is packing it up.
- My legs feel like I am running through cement, or quicksand; seemingly in slow motion or underwater and there is nothing I can do to fix it
- Or, the classic plot twist where I’m having the race of my life only to lose the course when it happens to intersect with a ridiculous space that a road race would never run through (like…..a shopping mall, hotel lobby or underground parking garage). It usually takes Dream Liz an embarrassingly long time to catch on that the marathon does not, in fact, pass through the food court 😦
Arriving late, being stuck in real-life slow motion or getting lost in a road marathon are not fears that specifically keep me up at night, but I think it’s pretty funny what my subconscious comes up with. Perhaps its general feelings of anxiousness manifesting themselves in my sleep into a tangible scenario I can relate to (since I guess I think a lot of about running). Either way, I appreciated the “win” dream last night, sandwiched in between my Sunday Scary nightmares about the meetings, emails and teams messages awaiting me this fine Monday morning.
There remain just seven short weeks until the Boston Marathon and my training mentality is starting to crest the mountain of work that, until the last few weeks, I felt was ahead of me. Now I’m starting to appreciate that a lot of that work is in the rear view mirror and the next several weeks are very much a game of “don’t fuck this up”. There are some gnarly long runs and workout left, but I look back at my little Strava graph and see twelve weeks of quality and consistency; a nice, slightly up-sloping, gradual line demonstrating a steady increase in mileage. No pointy bits (up nor down) representing a sudden jump beyond my capacity, or a forced down week due to injury, illness or life. I’m proud of being able to work so consistently towards this goal so far, but I’m trying to remind myself that the unexpected can happen at any minute and now is the time to keep an eye out for warning signs that my body (or mind) needs a break.
Injuries are so weird. Whenever I haven’t had an injury in a while, I live in the hilariously delusional place in my head that there will be easy-to-recognize, impossible-to-ignore warning signs before any serious running-related injury strikes. Ah, yes, as soon as something is a little sore or extra tight, I’ll chill, take an extra rest day and all will be well! This has, at times, proven to be true (the assumption that there will be obvious warning sings), like having shin splints for several weeks before incurring a stress fracture in my tibia. Or a certain friend of mine having significant Achilles pain for several weeks before eventually tearing it. But, and I hate to use this phrase, as a youthful flower in my 35-year-old prime, “as I get older”, all of my injuries seem to feel more like fun surprises! I strained my calf in the middle of a long run last February, I don’t remember even feeling any tightness before it felt like someone shot me in the calf with a pellet gun. I strained my hamstring during the cooldown of an off-season long run of barely 20km in the fall. Both took me out of running, especially speedwork and hills, for a few weeks and left me confounded that just a few days earlier, I had been running fast and free, no idea I was about to be on my ass for a few weeks.
These sneaky-injuries are front of mind right now since my fiancé fell victim to a very grumpy achilles two weeks ago. We completed a long run with some legit speedwork in the mix, but nothing much longer or more intense than the rest of our long runs the preceding few weekends. No noticeable pain or abnormal tightness during or right after the run until he woke up the next morning with a little pain. He did all the right things, took a few extra rest days, went to have it checked out, etc. I won’t go into the full spiel but long story short, a few weeks, a sports med doc appointment and a few physio visits later, he is still very much on the mend and I still can’t quite believe how sneaky of an injury it seems to be. He is patient, dedicated and fit and my fingers and toes are crossed for a quick recovery for him over the next few weeks.
And so it’s been a timely reminder for me to look alive, stay sharp and remember to look a little deeper than that pretty Strava graph with my own training. I’ve been playing it a little fast and loose with proper recovery between hard efforts and making sure to fuel, hydrate and refuel properly after long runs. Those are the little injury gremlins that can unravel all of your careful, conservative training if you let them. There are lots of little actions to take to reduce the risk of getting injured and it’s easy to ignore them. Replace your running shoes with 1000km on them…….THEO. Avoid doing hard, long workouts on surfaces that you maybe aren’t accustomed to (I definitely strained my calf doing a road workout on a snow covered surface after a very long, hard track workout I had no business doing earlier that week). Hard intervals on the road are not meant to be done on back to back days and don’t get distracted trying to impress yourself with a new PR when it doesn’t serve the purpose of your goal. When I look back at past injuries, maybe I didn’t feel the warning signs in my body but the clues are almost always there staring me right in the face. This is a friendly reminder from me to me.
Last two weeks of training:
Feb 12 – 18 (Totals: 85km, 7 hr 40min, 1085m vert)
Monday – 5km easy with Jess
Tuesday – 6 x 1km @3:55/km, 1min rest ~16km
Wednesday – Dawn Patrol ~8km
Thursday – Dirtbags! 4 x 45s, 4 x 2min, 4 x 1min uphill. I felt this. ~9km, 350m vert
Friday – full rest day
Saturday – 5 x 5km @4:20/km, 1km targeting 5min/km, aka “fake recovery” (did not happen for all of them). 35km. Felt like absolute death after.
Sunday – ~13km easy recovery
Feb 19 – 25 (Totals: 86km, 8 hr 15min, 1066m vert)
Monday – full rest day
Tuesday – 15.5km with 12 x 100m hill sprints
Wednesday – Dawn Patrol ~8km
Thursday – Dirtbags! 4 sets of 400m progressing from marathon pace to 5km pace ~11km
Friday – Long Run – 10km @5min/km, 5km @~4:40/km, 5km @ ~4:25/km, 5km @4:15/km – cooldown to ~28km
Saturday – 13km easy
Sunday – ~11km, 300m vert up the Gap with some OG Dirtbag running pals
This one time I went running 