Running Long After Racing

This weekend was a big one for me. Saturday marked my last triathlon of the year, followed by a long run on Sunday. While I'm no stranger to the 10-11 mile distance, running it the day after a race was a whole new beast for me. Since I knew ahead of time I had to do my long run on Sunday I tried to pay extra attention to recovery after Saturday's race. I wanted to do whatever possible to prevent Sunday's run from being a slogfest.

When I woke up on Sunday morning I was ready to bag the run. I thought about moving it to Monday but knew that wouldn't really happen. I ultimately decided to do the run that evening in favor of getting a few more hours of sleep. I knew it would be warmer later in the day but I just couldn't drag myself out of bed after having to be awake at 4:30 the previous day.

In a nice twist of events my dad ended up riding his bike alongside me as I ran. I don't really have any running buddies but this works out pretty great as he knows when to push me and when not to and he can carry my bottles for me too. When we first started I felt great. I felt like I was running on completely fresh legs and holding an 8:30 pace felt super easy. Miles 4-7 were pretty uneventful, except I started getting a little dizzy. I probably should have started off a bit slower, even if I felt good enough to run faster.

Somewhere between miles 7 and 8 things started going downhill. The hip pain that I dealt with off and on during May and early June made a return. After paying attention to when it happens I think I've figured out that it's mostly brought on by running long in my new Adrenaline's. When I first started feeling the discomfort I slowed down a little to see if that helped. And it did, for a mile or so. I wasn't going to do anything stupid and run through the pain but I figured if I could get the pain to subside then I could keep running. I finished the run with my last two miles holding 10:15 min/mile but minimal discomfort.

It was pretty frustrating because my legs felt decent enough to run faster but I didn't want to aggravate my hip anymore. I was going for 11 miles yesterday but ultimately called in quits at 10.85 since that's when I made it back to my car. Last weekend I did a similar deal of doing a long track workout of mile repeats on Saturday and then doing my long run on Sunday. Sunday's run was absolutely miserable even from the very beginning. Although this Sunday's run didn't go perfectly at least it was considerably better than last weekend's.

10.85 miles / 1:40:02 / 9:13 pace