Week 34 & 35: Comeback?

5 runs for a total of 86K -- not a bad week.

On Tuesday I go for my usual fast 8K by the bay -- my first fast run since the injury. It doesn't go well in the sense that I'm real slow. I mean, I was not expecting miracles after the injury but at 4:46min/km that was my slowest "fast run" on this route. Every. And trust me, I wasn't cutting myself any slack. But to be honest I'm fairly happy: that I lost my speed was only to be expected but my calf is behaving well during the run and that's far more important.

Somehow surprisingly my following run on Wednesday goes surprisingly well: it's just a recovery run but I'm going at a decent pace, fairly effortlessly.

And then on Friday I hit Black Mountain and do my hill run. It's tough as always but to my surprise I only miss my PR by little over a minute. Not bad.

On Sunday I go for a long run but by the time I'm ready for it it's already dark. Funny how different running at night is. Even the familiar routes seem to be completely different, so are the surrounding sounds (or sometimes lack of them), plays of shadows... I'm not very skittish but I met my share of animals at night and although in all of those encounters I was the big guy, I won't pretend that I do not get goosebumps every now and then...

On Monday I'm again hurting all over. I really need a day off and I take one.

Tuesday is CrossFit and then a fast run. On one hand I feel at an disadvantage as my hamstrings are hurting a lot after CrossFit's lunges. On the other hand, for a change, I do thing workout at night and there is hardly any wind, whereas usually it is very strong and very annoying on this route. In any case my pace is quite a bit better than last week at 4:33min/km.

On Wednesday I feel tired but the CrossFit workout is too good to miss. The downside is that afterwards my legs are completely dead so I'm not able to go running.

Somehow my tiredness continues throughout Thursday and even on Friday all I can do is an easy run.

On Saturday I again hit Black Mountain. One more time this week I do this workout at night and although there's never any wind on Black Mountain, it means I don't have to deal with the scorching sun which is quite a bonus. So I feel my chances are good to set a new PR. On the way up at some point a big bat almost collides with my face. It steers away at the very last moment and only brushes my hair (talking about goosebumps...). I reach the top and it's a bummer; I'm just a few seconds faster than last week and still a minute shy of my PR.

On Sunday I'm supposed to do a long run but I feel so completely drained of energy that I end up not doing anything. I don't know what's going on but for the last few days this is how I feel; as if my batteries run out or something. After the injury and one month break I should be hungry for running and instead I feel this apathy... and this extends to more than just running. Perhaps it's the effect of working a bit too hard the last 2 or 3 weeks? (Fitspector, I'm looking at you!). I hope I'll manage to shake it loose soon, especially that the 50k race is coming up in less than two weeks...

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