Right after I finished the bike ride, I took off for my ~4 mile run. It ended up being a little longer than anticipated, largely because I was so anxious to be able to run ont he sidewalk outside the bounds of my neighborhood, that I went with my typical ~4 mile loop. In hindsight, I probably should have stopped at 4 miles - I have this fancy shmancy GPS enabled HR monitor - I should have been able to tell just about exactly where to turn around to reach 4 miles.
Garmin Results
Overall, a pretty decent run. I definitely felt like running with no shoes makes for a very different T1 brick experience - in a good way. My not using the quads as much, my legs felt springier off the blocks than is typical after a bike ride.
Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to keep the pace closer to 9:30-10 min/mile, it ended up being faster. I really should have made a better effort to keep the pace down so as not to put too much on my hips and legs when starting the season, especially with little to no recovery time in between activities.
Also, my calves started to feel fatigued before I even reached the halfway point. During the run, I was concerned that maybe having the entire week off in between was not the best move, and I anticipated a few days of very stiff muscles in the upcoming week. So, while the 4.3 was doable, I was glad that was all I did.
Regarding the next few days - yes, the calves were stiff, but not as much as I feared. During the initial forey into barefoot running, if my calves felt like that during a run, I was pretty much guaranteed of three days of feeling very flat footed with very stiff calves.
The bigger thing that I paid attention to was, of course, the IT band. Every so often - even a couple months ago, I'd have moments where I could feel it being tight. I could feel the tissue rubbing on the outside of my knee ever so slightly. Never painful, just.. present. Since it seems to be omnipresent ever since last year, and I've since done an Olympic tri and half marathon with no issues, it has become something for me to pay attention to, but not be too concerned about. Essentially, I use it as a baseline and potentially an early warning system. Anyway, a couple days after the bike/run brick, I felt like it was rubbing a little more than usual. Since I was travelling, I decided to give my hips and legs a good stretch each night when I got back to the hotel, because I need to make sure to stretch on a regular basis, yoga class or no yoga class.
After a few days, things seem to have calmed back down to normal, so I think in the grand scheme of things, the intensity and workload from the brick workout was just about right. But it'll be something I continue to monitor, since I am figuring I'll do these brick workouts most Saturdays.
Back to running - I'm thinking this weekend will be about 4.5 - 4.75 miles. It's tempting to go for my 5.25 mile loop, but its still early to be tacking on an entire mile at once.
No comments:
Post a Comment