Can I just start this post with OMG THE WEATHER IS SO NICE RIGHT NOW!!!
This weekend was jammed packed with everything I like about Spring. We walked to dinner, we walked to the park, we played tball in the backyard, I ran twice. It even hit 70 the one day and will again on Wedneday.
I know there is a big likelihood we have a huge snow storm just waiting for us on the other side between now and real Spring. But whatever...THE WEATHER is SO NICE!
So I basically just left my tempo run up there as a placeholder and then never posted. I was busy being a person who lives outside. Sorry about that. But there was another reason too. My warm-up was easy and my tempo run of 3 miles that were supposed to hit 9:39 each was better than expected. I ran it outdoors and it is easier for me to be fast outside than on the treadmill where I feel like at any moment I'm going to trip and bash my head in. It just feels way different. So first tempo mile was admittedly too fast 9:29 but at least I was able to check myself before I wrecked myself and settled down and was good at pace for the remainder of the run. At the end of the cooldowb I was feeling a bit of weirdness in the knee area. My kiddo who decided not to nap was in the front yard playing with my hubby when I ran past and said "I've got .6 to go" so I had a buddy cheering me on. I didn't make it the full .6 to go because my knee started feeling not good and I decided there was no reason to be a hero to finish out the Cool Down strong (whatever that means) and so you can see my pace dipped to almost 15 min avg.
So I was kind of waiting to see how my long run would go to comment about it. Maybe it was a fluke is what I was thinking. I will say I had a twinge of that feeling before after being stopped at stoplight back after mile 6 of my 8 mile LR last week as well. But running "fixed" it/loosened it up back to normal.
Ok, so Long Run was going just fine until again I had that weird knee feeling/some calf stiffness. I was in the high 10's and very very low 11's for pace looking back the entire time. So I'm proud of myself for that. But there was that sore knee thing (admittedly nowhere near as ouch as the previous run) and instead of stopping I just kept going at the end because I was only .5 miles from home. I should have probably just walked but I wanted to complete that mile. And then LSUlakes posted my exact question....when do you stop and when do you keep going when you feel soreness?
So long story short...after some conversations on the running thread and in my PM, I have a revised plan that now has 4 days of running per week.
WAIT, what? I'm sore, so I'm going to run MORE times a week? Yeah, it actually does make sense when you look at how it is spreading the miles out over the course of the week and adding in an extra day of easy, short running to keep me loose and my body used to it (and all the other things people were talking about on the running thread over the weekend.) Whatever will keep me from being ouchy is fine by me...so we shall see how this goes. I'm also going to try to add in light strength training in my basement on Wed nights (thanks for the link Ariel!) Starting slow with that...no need to completely break myself at first...but I really want to be strong enough not to go into "sore-mode" every time I have a long run.
The good news is my legs feel fine right now. Not even a little sore. So it's not like I have anything that's broken.
Ok, that was long winded. Here's my "tinkered with plan" for this week. (pun copyright
@DopeyBadger 2017) I was expecting a 9 mile LR on Sunday, but you will see that has changed. My new plan maxes me out at 10 mile as my longest run pre-Tink instead of 12. But more days out running pre-tink as well.
Tink Training Week #6!
Monday: Bachelor - home town dates! Let's see how many fathers he asks for their daughters hand in marriage?
Tuesday: 4 mi @ EB 11:16
Wed: basement strength
Thursday: 1.5 WU 12:49, 3 mi Tempo 9:39, 1.5 mi CD 12:49
Fri: OFF
Sat: 4 mi @ EA 12:03
Sun: 4 mi @ LR 10:52
So let's see how my legs feel as we go along this week and next before I hit a week with a size-able LR.
On a personal note: sometimes it is hard for me to admit to you all and to myself when I need to change something. Because I often feel like I'm failing my plan if something is not working out perfectly. I felt a bit sad-sack about running only 5.9 instead of 6 miles on Thursday after hitting my tempo portion so well, and that's silly looking back at it. And then I was debating how to tell everyone my knee wasn't feeling great during my LR. Which is also silly because none of you would ever be like "Boo- you are a failure." I know it's more important that I speak up with the questions right away when something doesn't go as planned, and not just feel bad about myself for not being invincible. I hope I'm not the only one that gets weird mentally about stuff like that. I want y'all to think I'm an awesome athlete but I also don't want to break myself trying to prove that.
I missed Jonathan Toews hat trick goal last game. 
