6 miles easy ankle tester - 4/15/12

I woke with my legs still feeling fatigued, which was a little bit of a surprise since neither the bike nor run yesterday were at a very high level effort.  However I neglected to take a full ice bath afterwards, and later in the day my legs were feeling fatigued, so I started thinking I might have to get back on the ice bath bandwagon.  I thought a good nights sleep would take care of it, but apparently not.

In my head, I originally thought it might be time to start introducing some intervals into my training - but with the legs feeling tired, that probably wasn't the best idea.  So, instead this was just an easy six miler with the primary goal to see how the ankle felt.  I admit to having cheated a tad, as I popped an Advil a bit before the run - but my reasoning was that if it could help prevent damage, then I'd at least have a temporary solution to be able to get in my miles and training without making things worse while the last tiny little imperceptible bit of inflammation healed.  I normally don't like taking anything like an NSAID for a run - but once in a while I think it can make sense and be helpful.  Besides, I knew the following day I'd have as a running rest day, and I'd be going to Yoga as well - and that always helps.

Everything started out pretty well on this run, but it was apparent rather quickly that my HR was showing I wasn't recovered yet.  It seemed fairly spiky - the smallest little incline would drive it up, and I felt like I had a hard time keeping it below 155.  So in the end, the pace was a bit slow for the HR - but I'm sure the heat had something to do with it as well, even though I went when it was cloudy and had cooled off a bit from the mid-day high temps.

Form-wise I primarily paid attention to upper body posture and adequate hip rotation.  I felt like I had a bit of a harder time relaxing the legs - it may have been residual fatigue that made it difficult, but I did what I could.  A good sign was that a couple times I felt like I was able to return to form and posture relatively quickly after losing concentration on it for a period of time.

The other good sign was that the ankle felt perfectly fine.