Last season when I came up with my off-season rest and rebuild plan, I had done so without knowing I'd be doing yoga, and without experiencing the benefits it has provided. I had also done so without having signed up for a half iron in June. So the original idea of waiting until the end of January to even start cycling on the rollers, and March before doing any running isn't going to work. It is too risky to try and build up to 56 miles on the bike followed by 13 miles of running between March and June. My concern isn't the ability to build up the distance for each event individually, it is being able to put the two back to back without having fatigue cause a relapse of IT band issues.
Another factor is also the build up of the calf muscles for that distance. Having never run essentially barefoot, my lower legs have no base from which to draw on when starting up running again. So the more time I have to build up, the better, as I can stretch things out a bit and keep from having intense workouts without adequate rest in between.
The last major reason is that I'd like to continue doing yoga 2x per week during the season, and eventually I'm going to have to put the body through the acclimation process of doing both. So while the dominant activity is yoga, I thought it might be a good idea to start introducing running into the picture with some short, easy runs. This way, hopefully, any tightness that is induced by running is very limited, and worked on fairly quickly by yoga practice.
So we'll see what happens.
Garmin Results.
The big thing I noticed during this run was that my upper body posture felt really solid. I feel like I was not leaning forward at all (I think I normally lean forward ever so slightly), and my head was up straight. I know for a fact that I often have my head down a bit looking at the ground ahead of me - this is something I noticed last year, and wanted to make an effort to fix, as I found that on long runs, my upper back and shoulders would start feeling it.
Before Thanksgiving, I had worked up to 3 miles in the sandals, but after having only done that once, I didn't want to start with that distance. I decided to shoot for just under 2 miles, and see how things went. During the run, the calfs felt strong until about 1.25-1.5 miles in - then I could tell they were getting fatigued, as some spring in my step was lost and my heel was making more contact than it had at the beginning of the run.
The day after, my calfs are tad sore. Right now I'm thinking that I'll do another short run in a couple days, probably only about 1.5 miles, and on flat surface. No sense in doing another short run with a 100' incline in 1/4 mile right off the bat again, as it only hastens fatigue and I'm not quite ready for that yet.
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