Around The Bay, March Totals, A Glitch In My Training

I can't really call this a race report for Around The Bay. I was not racing at all so in the spirit of the training run I will keep this short but figure I should say something.

Once again this year we travelled in the Longboat bus down to the race. The weather was really great this year, perfect for running. Kim was racing, I was running it as a slightly quicker long run. I spent 3.5 hours on the trails running the day before so no way I was racing it.

I started way back in the field and ended having a great time. The plan was to run 5 minute kms and just enjoy the run. The first few kms were super slow as I was waayyyyyy back in the pack but by the 4km mark I got a little running room and settled into pace for the rest of the race.

I spent the next 20km constantly passing large groups of people. One of the cool things about starting way back in the field is that I must have seen and talked to more then 20 runners that I knew out on the course not including Longboat runners. I saw runners from my RR clinics, ultra runners that I knew, runners that I had met at other races or around High Park even a couple of former students. I ran along with this person and that person chatting a bit before moving along.

After my last blog entry and some of the over the top reaction (more about this in my next post) I wondered if some angry runner might find me and freak out but all went smoothly. In fact I saw and talked to many people that really liked the post.

I was able to get a solid run in but the last 10km were tough as the fatigue from my long run the day before started to catch up with my legs. Still a great experience and I crossed the finish line in 2:34 and change. Not close to my PB but that was kind of the point.

Kim ran great setting a new PB by more then 7 minutes.

March Training Totals

Runs - 30

Quality runs - 8

Long runs -6

B2B long runs - 3 times
Distance - 299.53 miles or 481.7km
Weight workouts - 16

A glitch in my Leadville training

So in the last couple of weeks I have hit a glitch in my training. I want to call it a small hiccup but really its become more of a giant beer burp. After running the Chilli Half Marathon I came away from the race with a sore left hamstring.

No problem, I did what I always do and just kept right on training. I follow the if it doesn't get worse then its fine to run on rule of training. This was fine for the first two weeks as I upped my mileage into the 90 mile range. It was actually slowly but surely getting better. Then two weeks ago I did my first long 3 hour plus run on the trails at Sulphur. I followed this with a medium hard 30k effort the next day at Around the Bay. This awesome combo of running resulted in a very sore hamstring and by the following Thursday I was forced to rest it for 2 days.

Another set of back to back long runs on trail the next weekend and again by mid week more trouble. I could run but not hard. No quality running for me which meant scrapping my first track workout of the season. Instead I took the group that I coach to the track and kept it slow. It is very hard to keep it slow on the track especially when you really want to let lose.

I am trying to pretend that I learned something last year. With that in mind I shut my running down totally since then. Its 5 days and counting but I should be good to go in another day or two. I could have run again after 2 days rest I am going to do my best break the re-aggravating the injury cycle if I can.

Now is the time to deal with it. I am in decent shape already so a week of down time will not hurt too bad. I want to be ready to go as May sees me running a few 50k races as training before the 100 miler at Sulphur. I figure its better to keep this to a loud beer burp then let it become a huge fart with the potential to leave a big mess in my pants.