After too many days of rest and not enough results, I decided today was the day to find out if pushing through the pain was the way to go. Regardless of what happens, I am definitely running the marathon on Sunday, but at this point I need to know what I'm up against.
Even though my longest scheduled run this week is 4 miles, I decided that I missed enough runs in the last few weeks to justify a slightly longer distance today. I don't want to overdo it, but I wanted to get in the longest run possible and didn't want to do it too close to race day. Plus, I really wanted to get in one more run at faster than marathon pace... trying to trick myself into believing that anything slower will be easy :)
Before heading out for my run, I decided I would try a few things to see if anything might help alleviate the discomfort in my leg. I took a few ibuprofen, covered my ailing area in Biofreeze gel (similar to Icy Hot, but it stays cool), got in a really good stretch and even convinced my husband to massage my leg to try to work out some of the kinks (massaging your own leg is complicated and not exactly thorough). While I'm not sure which ones worked best, I'm thinking I may repeat all of them on race day because I left the house feeling better than I had in some time... and I couldn't wait to see how running felt.
Unfortunately there are still a few issues to deal with... there's definitely some tightness and I'm still a little sore... but all in all, I felt really good. And while I didn't need to push myself quite as hard as I did, I knew in the back of my mind that, if it felt difficult but wasn't particularly fast, I would be concerned about how to pace myself on Sunday. I was pleasantly surprised that my pace ended up at 8:12... because I know that's far faster than I intend to run on Sunday and I want Sunday's pace to feel comfortable. And I'm feeling pretty good about my chances.
For now, it's time for ice, heat, stretching and more Biofreeze before bed... and maybe a bowl of ice cream, too! :)
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