The burn out

The week after the marathon, I felt great. However, I still stayed off my "running feet" for the entire week just to give myself some time to rebound. Saturday came around and I went out with the team and managed to run 5 miles. When I caught up to Andy (he went to Alaska with us) he was complaining about how difficult it was to run, when he didn't think he'd have a problem. I, on the other hand, felt great - and since I no longer needed to complete my internship, it now looked like I had a whole summer to focus on grad classes and improving my running.

The week before the 4th of July, I decided to hit the streets every day. Of course I  kept it simple and stayed low in mileage, but by Wednesday I thought I'd push myself.  I woke up and ran an easy 6 miles. It was good to get out and go further - plus, I think I wanted to eat a big dinner that night! = ) The next day, Tracey called and wanted to know if I wanted to run her "hilly" route through Columbia. Why not - I had run an easy 6 the day before, so let's hit some hills. That went really well too. Friday, we left for Deep Creek for 4th of July weekend. I was excited to be able to run through Sky Valley - after all, 7 miles of our marathon run was on trail exactly like that. So, I woke up, got dressed and plotted my route. I noticed during this run, it was fairly hard. My first thought was - I don't really run on roads like this at home, maybe that is the problem. My second thought happened to be - I might also be in for new shoes... I wonder if these guys are "dead" yet. I carried on, even though the run seemed to be the hardest since I started training in February. 

Sunday, I thought I would go for another run - this time I couldn't even run 2 miles! What in the world... I was doomed. I began to get down and realized that, although I haven't had many bad runs, when I do - I really get depressed. It's easy to sit there and think "I just ran 26 miles the other day... why on earth are 3 so damn hard..." I decided, much thanks to lots of leg pain, it had to be the shoes. So, on Monday I went out to Fleet Feet and purchased a brand new pair of shoes, and let me tell you, I was super excited to use them. Pretty much all I had figured this far  was right - my shoes were totally dead. 

That night, I laced up my new shoes and hit the neighborhood. Half a mile later - I was dying. I could hardly move my legs. My feet felt like they had cinder blocks attached to them and my legs just ached. This wasn't fair - what in the world was going on?I decided to ask Jonathan for some advice - I had pretty  much come to the conclusion that my legs were signing out for quite some time. This was their way of telling me recovery was needed and I had to stop. The same day, as irony would have it, my new book on Women's Running by Jeff and Barb Galloway showed up. This book was full of great suggestions. I finished the week with some cycling classes and felt a lot better.  Yesterday I thought I'd give a small 4 mile run a try with the team and - it worked! I was able to make it and felt as though I was working my way back up.