Week 11: Review

As the knee was substantially better this week, I slowly worked my way back into the normal routine. Except for the race this morning, all of the runs that I did this week were ~5min/km recovery runs over relatively short distances. Yesterday I did an eight miler to test my readiness for today, and it went quite well. As mentioned in previous posts, my heart rate is a little higher than usual, but the perceived effort isn't any worse so that's likely just a matter of my body getting used to the volume again.

As for the injury itself there is still a bit of a twinge periodically, however there hasn't been any pain in several days now so it's on the right course. I've been religiously stretching to keep in on that track, and I even repeat a few of the critical ones a couple times to be 100% certain. This has worked well, as it pretty much eliminates any discomfort for a period after the stretch. Further, the nice clear roads certainly have contributed to my recovery, as not having to jump over snow and ice mean that it's easier to keep my gait clean and reduce unnatural stresses.

The job at this point is to get back on track with the proper schedule, and to try and get my fitness back up to where it was prior to the Around the Bay race in a couple of weeks. As long as things remain on this course I should be okay, but I've yet to try any really long runs as of yet so that is still a test that needs to be done. Regardless, my success this morning has buoyed my confidence and I'm a lot more confident in my ability to run that race as planned ;)

Weekly Totals:
Running: 40.8km (25.4mi)
Walking: 11.5km (7.1mi)
Cycling: 30.0km (18.6mi)
Total: 82.3km (51.1mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 642.4km (399.2mi)
Walking: 135.1km (83.9mi)
Cycling: 785.0km (487.8mi)
Total: 1562.5km (970.9mi)

Starting at this point, I'll be going back to the Pfitzinger plan as published. I'll likely slow down a few of the paces until my heart rate gets back to where it was. That's not necessarily a bad thing, however, as I probably should be doing my long runs at a slower pace than I've been doing anyway ;) The 5K has shown me that I can get back to the higher intensity work, however, which I'll be very happy to return to.

Upcoming Week:
Mon 50K Cycle
Tue 7mi (11.3K) Recovery w/6x100m
Wed 30K Cycle + 11mi (17.7K) LT w/7mi (11.3) @15K pace
Thurs 50K Cycle
Fri 12mi (19.3K) Medium-Long
Sat 5mi (8K) Recovery
Sun 20mi (32.2K) LSD

I didn't end up getting any swimming in last week as the pool schedules didn't really line up with my plans. I also missed my Friday cycling session, as I was out for most of the day at a bike show looking over new products and picking up a few things that I needed. While the injury is getting better at this point, I'd still like to work some swimming in there so I'll keep looking for an opportunity.

The one caveat, however, is that I'm going to need to look into some equipment on that front. At this point, I have no facility to measure my performance in this sport whatsoever. My Polar RS800sd uses a 2.4GHz radio, so it can't communicate with the heart rate strap underwater. Further, neither footpod nor GPS-based systems have any way to monitor speed or distance in the water so I'm not sure how to record that either. With that said, I'm strongly leaning toward picking up a Suunto memory belt so that I can at least get heart rate data for these sessions.