Down and Up Again

It has been a weird  week. Sunday I was a little sore, but Monday I was in a lot of pain and thought I might have to give up training. Tuesday I saw the doctor and she did some magic and talked me off the ledge. She sent me out for a run and I left with a glimmer of hope that I could still continue training. I spent the rest of the week icing, doing the gentle stretches and strength work she prescribed along with my training. Today is Saturday, and my training plan called for a 1:15 Zone 1-Zone 2 run. When I finished my 7.9 miles, it was my longest run in 3 months and it was completely pain free. The rest of the day, I’ve been icing, stretching, and taking Ibuprofen. Tomorrow will bring a 2:30 ride. What will Monday bring? I hope it brings less pain and more hope than last Monday.

I need to keep healing up over the next few weeks as the training will be entering the build phase in just three more weeks. Once that’s here, training gets heavy. Right now, I enjoy looking at workouts on the schedule for the week ahead. The next phase is more complicated. Some day are easy and others are long and difficult. I’ve put the workouts on my calendar so that I make sure I have time to do them, but I try not to think too much about them. If I was totally healthy, thinking about them would probably be helpful, but since I’m not I’m just taking it one day at a time and looking forward to the fun events. Next weekend, Mike and I are doing the Tour de Cure, a ride to raise money for diabetes. There are several route distances to choose from, but I think we are going to do the metric century which is 62 miles. The following weekend is the Liberty Olympic distance triathlon. A friend has been nice enough to agree to do the run leg of the triathlon for me. I’ve been doing some transition workouts and so far running off the bike has been going well. Racing off the bike makes me nervous about hurting myself. I have another Oly just 3 weeks later, so I’ll give myself a break and just do the swim and bike. Hopefully I’ll be more confident about doing all three legs without hurting myself after a little more training and rehab.

Besides healing and training, I’ll be trying to squeeze in a couple of special workouts while the kids are still in school. They don’t get out until June 7th, so I have a little more time. Once they are home, I try to be efficient, getting my workouts in while taking as little time away from them as necessary. While they are still in school, I’ll take a little extra time to drive to places a little further away to ride or run for a change of scenery. I’ll try to get in a lake swim or two, and try to fit in some extra social time with friends. Summer is just around the corner, and I can’t wait. No matter what happens on the training front, I always enjoy having the kids at home and summer days!