March 4th: Soreness, But Not in My Muscles

Well, I had about 48 hours to bask in the glow of my half-marathon success. It's Tuesday -- interval day.

The thing about intervals is that if you're doing them right, they're hard. As I mentioned in my post on Sunday, intervals are one component of the program that is making me strong on hills and strong at the ends of runs. I'd love to be able to do some Yasso repeats or other interval track work, but for now, I'm designing my own interval program. This week was even tougher than last: I went farther (4.3 miles), faster (minimum of 8 mph on the fast intervals) and longer (2 minutes on, 1:30 slow the entire workout). And the speedwork is at a 2 percent incline.

It's March freakin' 4th, for God's sake!

The great thing about intervals, besides their training value, is that they make the time fly by. 36:22 felt like 20 minutes. Especially on mornings like today, when outdoors isn't an option and you're stuck on the dreadmill, its nice to have the time blink by.

On Sunday, I mentioned that niggling sore throat. It's still around. I reached out on Facebook -- I'd prefer to avoid a doctor's visit, but I also don't want a small issue to become a huge problem. I can't afford to lose more training time to illness. But thanks to Cheryl Larned, Joe Bongiovanni, Matt Frey and Chris Starke for their advice. I think the thing to do is see if I can't just dry this thing out. I have some

OK, so it's store brand.

Zyrtec on hand, so I'm going with that for now, along with some ibuprofen to take down the inflammation. It obviously isn't hurting my performance, so I will hold on a few more days before going to the doc.

Tomorrow is my kinda long (might clear the 400 total mark), and Thursday is recovery-run day. Saturday I'm going for 18, and as of now, the forecast looks good. 

Total miles since starting the blog: 391.3.