LSD Saturday

Man, do I love Saturdays. Especially this week since I am off on Monday. So that is almost like getting 2 Saturdays. My legs were really feeling weak the last couple of days and the wind has been kicking my ass, so I took a couple of days off to try and get my legs back. I felt pretty good this morning, so I decided to try another LSD day. If you remember correctly, I went out too fast the last time I tried for long, slow distance, and ended up cutting the day short. Today, since I was feeling good, I really had to try and keep it slow, and decided I was going to measure in time instead of distance to see if that would help. I wasn't really sure how long I wanted to go, but I knew I wanted it to be more than an hour. For some reason, an hour seemed like a mental milestone. I have no idea how far I went, but I ended up walking for an hour and a half. And now I am paying for it.

The little bit of breeze we had today was nice and cool, so the weather really was perfect. My knees starting feeling a little tender at about the 30 minute mark, but I knew I couldn't stop there. I thought I would keep pushing it for a little bit and see what would happen. They never really stopped hurting, but they didn't get any worse, either. I knew I really needed to work myself today, just for a little peace of mind. I'm getting a little concerned that I have been taking it a little too easy, and I'm not pushing my legs hard enough to build the strength and stamina that I need. Since I'm not going to run the Redbud tomorrow, I thought I might test myself a little bit. It sounds pretty easy, but try going to the track by yourself and walking for an hour and a half with nobody to talk to and see how you are feeling afterwards. To ease my knees a little, I actually walked the last couple of miles (about 35 minutes) on the grass along the inside of the track. The softer surface made my legs feel alot better.

So I accomplished what I wanted to do today. I worked my legs hard, but without risking injury. And more importantly, I proved to myself that I can work through the pain and keep moving. I think it is going to become more and more important to get mentally fit, because while an hour and a half seemed like a long time to be out there, on race day, we will be out there at least 3 times longer on race day. I need to start searching for races between now and the marathon, because I need the practice of preparing to race. One of the big surprises today are my feet. I am amazed at how bad the balls of my feet were hurting when I got home. I'm thinking I need to stop putting any lotion on my feet if I am going to keep from getting blisters. That should make wearing flip-flops very attractive all summer.

I'm off to ice my legs right now, or there is a good chance I will be on the couch all day tomorrow. But with all-day Masters coverage, that might be OK, too.

By the way, if you are also training for a race out there, let me know how it is going and if you have any tricks we can use.