I think I’ve got this running thing figured out. I FINALLY got up to 5.6 miles! You have no idea how big an accomplishment that is for me, but that’s not where I was going with this…
Why didn’t someone tell me I had to REST every now and then? Well, I don’t mean that I’ve been running every single day or anything like that. What I mean is that I’ve realized I’ve been running for three weeks, and on my last two runs I noticed my calves starting to tighten up again. I’m guessing that after my last recovery period, the muscles in my calves had gone back down, but the past three weeks of running built them up again. So much so that when they start expanding from exertion, there’s no room for them and the compartment syndrome sets in.
The familiar tightness in the calves and numbness and pain on the outside of my shins was still tolerable, but I knew if I continued, it would get worse and I was already starting to feel the beginning of shin splints. So I decided that I would take this week off of running, but actually, the decision was made for me by getting a nasty cold. I was pretty much laid out. It started with what I thought was just a headache on Saturday night. Surprise!
On Sunday, I had done my first Bikram yoga class with my teacher training group (hoping it would alleviate my headache, but it didn’t), and then Monday I did 90 minutes of Spinning. I was pretty tired after the Bikram yoga on Sunday and figured that might be normal, but a couple hours after Spinning class, I started feeling tired and worse and worse till eventually all I could do was veg out on the sofa with no energy to move. By the next day, I didn’t get out of bed except to walk my dog. Of course, he wasn’t cooperating (of all days!) and I had to take him for a walk TWICE because he wouldn’t do his business. All I could think of was, “Wow! What a beautiful day! I wanna go back to bed!”.
So I’m using the rest of the week to recover. I couldn’t even go to Spinning or practice yoga, so what the hell - my body is telling me to knock it off once in a while! When I say I’m recovering, I’m not exaggerating. I’m wiped out so I’m really not doing any kind of working out. It’s all I can do to get in some restorative yoga postures.
Now that I’ve got it ALL figured out, here’s the deal: After this week of recovery, I’m going to slowly increase my mileage. It was unbelievable to me that I actually got up to 5 miles. I’ve never been able to run that far, but I’m secretly training for a half-marathon. I think what I need to do is train for 3-4 weeks, then recover for a week with some cross-training.
I’ll let you know how that goes.