90 minute run - 8/4

After the 20 miler from this past weekend, I was out of town from Sunday night until Wednesday afternoon for work. Normally I try to make Monday my yoga night, but obviously that wasn't going to work. However, I did bring the P90x DVD's with me - so I did the legs routine on Tuesday, leaving me with the question of whether to do yoga Wednesday night, or go for a run. I opted to go to yoga instead, taking the more conservative approach of giving my legs an extra day of rest after the legs routine, in addition to giving myself a chance to stretch back out from the 20 miler on Sunday.

That left Thursday for the 90 minute mid-week run. I was a little concerned right off the bat, because no more than 1/4 mile into it, I could feel the IT band rubbing. Damn it - still a bit stiff from P90x before. I actually thought about stopping right then and there, but decided to continue on based on two factors: I've had this happen before, and found that with some slow pace running, the muscles eventually open up and the rubbing goes away; and I've also found that if I keep my cadence up, thus assuring I don't heel strike, I can keep IT band rubbing at bay.
Sure enough after a couple miles, things started to loosen up a bit. I still took a few minutes at mile 3 to stretch out a bit. All in all, things felt pretty good and strong, which was a little bit of a surprise. I guess I was expecting to feel some residual fatigue from the 20 miles on Sunday, plus the legs routine on Tuesday.

With it now being a day after, unfortunately I'm feeling that things are still tight, which has caused me to feel the IT band a few times throughout the day. So at this point, I'm thinking I'll skip on the weekend run, as I'm planning a century bike ride for tomorrow, and don't want to over stress the muscles. My thinking is that the benefits of the legs routine are great enough to warrant holding back on the running a bit until my legs are used to all the squats and lunges, and can do them without getting as sore and tight.

But for right now, time for a hot bath and some good stretching time (I was stupid and neglected the ice bath and post-run stretching yesterday after I got back home).