Mary’s 9 Miler
Welp, according to my official schedule, technically I was supposed to throw down 12 miles today. I changed plans slightly in the interest of injury protection (and also due to being pretty fatigued from my last couple days of soccer and hard running).
I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been up to since my last post.
Friday I had co-ed soccer. Games are 7 v 7 on half of a regulation sized field, and run for 50 minutes. I played most the game. My team tied 3-3. The team we played was good (though we were clearly better), but they ran us a lot, and put goals away when they needed to.
Saturday I had a full sided (11 v 11) game with my women’s team. Again, I played most the game (probably around 75 or 80 minutes out of 90) in varying positions. I definitely got my sprint workout in for the week! We won 1-0, and I had the assist for the goal off a long cross.
Today, when I woke up, my legs felt like lead. Mostly my thighs and hamstrings were heavy, and my abs and even upper body felt sore (and still do feel sore!) I’m sure at some point in my career my body has felt this tired, I just no longer have any recollection of that memory.
So when I headed over to run 12 miles this morning, I decided beforehand I was going to take it really, really easy. The other thing, by the way, is that my achilles was giving me a little pain after my run on Thursday and the game on Friday. Saturday there was minor pain as well, but not as bad as the first two days. Each new morning when I woke up, the pain would be gone, so I just figured everything was/is okay. But I didn’t want to push it on my long run.
Since this was officially my first long run, I thought 9 miles would suffice. I made sure to take it easy, and ran 9 miles at a 9.20 mile pace. It felt really good - though I never really got my heart rate up. Cardio wise I felt like I was walking….but my legs wouldn’t move! You can see from this picture (which I took immediately after the run) that I haven’t really pushed it cardio-wise…my hair isn’t even sweaty at all! It looks like a pre-run photo, but I swear I just finished nine miles.
Hopefully this week was a good preparation for next week, since it marks the first time that I really had a full, hard week of working out. This coming week, I think I’ll try to take it a little easier on my short runs (try to ease off that 7 min/mile pace)….but it’s really hard because I’m so competitive. I’d like to have a stronger Sunday run, though, so I’ll try to keep that in mind during the week!
