Since today was forecast to be the nicer day of the two this weekend, I decided to go for my long run today, saving the trainer workout for tomorrow.
The last couple LSD runs have been just a hair under 12 miles, and I haven't run anything longer then that since the Monson half in November. Part of the reason was that my right foot had its tendonitis issue, and then I only recently got over some runners knee symptoms in the left knee after overdoing it mileage-wise a few weeks ago. Since neither have been bothing me for over a week now, I figured something in the 15ish range would be good for today.
Right away I could tell that this was going to be a perfect example of running before not fully recovering from a previous workout. After I got off the trainer yesterday, I could tell it was a good workout because my legs were feeling a little fatigued. I only ended up having a glass of chocolate milk and a banana for dinner before going to bed. Then this morning I had another glass of chocolate milk and a zone bar for breakfast before setting out on my run. So the combination of a quick turnaround, plus not having eaten anything substantial means that my muscles were still a tad tight from yesterday, and my energy stores were lower than usual for a Saturday long workout. I didn't get 20 feet down the road before I could tell I didn't have as much spring in my step as normal. I debated whether I should actually go for the full intended distance or not, but decided to press on, knowing I could call it later on if I needed to. Fortunately, within a couple miles, I was able to tell things had loosened up a bit, removing pretty much any extra concern for a problem to develop.
So while that was good news, the 'bad' (if you really want to call it that) was that it was also apparent that my HR was going to be a bit higher than normal for this pace. Whereas last weeks run was at an 8:42 min/mile pace and the HR was in the low 140's, today was going to be closer to 9 min/miles and the HR around 150. I was ok with that, though, since I had a good reason - the quick turnaround and lack relative lack of food since the last workout. Logging miles in the appropriate HR range was more important than pace or whereabouts in that range I ended up.
One of the things I did last season on every long run was take a walk break every mile. While I'm still an advocate for that strategy, I'm trying to save it for only my longest runs or an actual marathon - and at this point 15 miles isn't a distance-extending run, so I limited the walk/stretch breaks to two - one at 7.5 miles, and one at 10 miles. In both cases, the reason for stopping was less because I felt like it was needed energy-wise, but because I felt like things were tightening up enough to justify a quick stretch to avoid further complications. I figured that was a good compromise for doing todays distance on muscles that started out tight.
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