I am behind on my weekly training updates, but am catching up now that I finally posted my Effingham race report.  I had a light training week the week after the race and then it was back to usual business the following week (well..kind of, more on that later)!

Week 14

Monday – rest day, and I really needed it!

Tuesday  – 2500 yd swim.

Wednesday – 1:30 trainer ride, followed by 2 mile run.

Thursday – 45 min recovery run, it was slow, managed 4.6 miles.  Had an early birthday dinner with my tri-club ladies, followed by delicious cupcakes

  
Friday – 2350 yd swim.

Saturday – 3 hour Birthday Ride with friends at the crack of dawn, 7a.  Perfect way to start my Birthday 🙂  After I got home and showered, JMR and I headed to Forest Park for a Beer Festival.  We met up with a couple of friends and had a great time tasting different local beers.  The sample cups were so small I think I only had three beers in total, which was probably a good thing!  After hanging out at home for a bit, JMR and I went to my favorite Italian restaurant for dinner.  It was a prefect low-key kind of birthday.  Oh!  And JMR got me an iPad mini, so now I can read my kindle books on something a bit larger than my iPhone at night 🙂

Sunday – 1:30 run at Forest Park, 9.56 miles @ 9:25 pace.

Total Training Hours: 9:05

Week 15

Monday – rest day 🙂

Tuesday – 2500 yd swim, Overslept and missed my swim, I did do my 45 min run in the afternoon.  Legs left heavy.

Wednesday – 1 hr trainer ride, followed by 15 min run.  This was a tough trainer ride with a 10 min tempo, followed by 8x 2min on 1 min off.  My legs were jello on the run!

Thursday – 1 hr run with 3 miles @ Half Marathon pace (8:12, 8:12, 8:08), that was a challenging run as just like Tuesday, my legs felt like logs.  After I thought about it, I realized it was the week before ‘the time of the month’ and I always am soooo tired the week before it arrives.  It made me feel better knowing that was why and I wasn’t just losing speed, but then I realized BOTH of my races are the week before it’s supposed to arrive.  Lovely.  Hopefully adrenaline takes over on race day and my legs wake up!

Friday – 2100 yd swim.  Also, my Infinit products I ordered arrived, hooray!!  I am running low on my custom Infinit Go Far powder I use for my rides, as well as my Infinite Repair recovery drink, so I ordered enough of both to last me the rest of the season.  I also decided to try Infinite Nocturnal, which you take at night after a hard / long workout.  Per their website, “After a long day, enjoy the creamy natural chocolate flavor,ultra-pure whey protein isolate and flax designed to soothe tired muscles and help you repair overnight. Tryptophan, a natural essential amino acid (long been known to increase the levels of melatonin and serotonin) will actually help lull you to a restful night of deep sleep after a long day of workouts”.  I can’t wait to try out after long workout days (mostly weekends)! 

Saturday – Well, the plan was to run 2 miles, ride 2 hours and then run 30 minutes.  However, when I hopped out of bed, my hip flexor had other plans.  My left hip flexor was so tight that it was painful to even walk!  At first I thought I just needed to pop my hip, but I could not get it to pop.  So after becoming more frantic, I woke up JMR and had him try to pull on my leg to make it pop.  Nope.  I foam rolled and stretched and it did seem somewhat better but still really tight.  I decided to try to run, and thought maybe it would even help loosen it.  Well, running felt awkward because I didn’t have much range of motion in my left hip, and after 15 minutes I called it quits. Then I foam rolled/stretched and got ready to ride.

My friend Bob was riding from his house and meeting me just down the street to ride on Clayton road, a road the a lot of cyclists ride on.  Honestly if he wasn’t meeting me, I would have totally bailed on the ride, but I figured I would just see how things went and could always turn around if my hip was angry with riding too.  So I set out, made it to our meeting spot and the realized that it didn’t hurt to ride, well hooray!  Maybe cycling will help and it will feel better after the ride.  We rode a hilly route Bob has rode in the past, which was around 35 miles.  We stopped 20 miles in at a gas station to refill water, and once I hopped off my bike, bam.  The pain was back.  Sonofa…grrr.  I tried to stretch but it didn’t seem to help.  I was so baffled at how and why my hip flexor was so angry?  I was fine all day Friday, did I do something in my sleep that night?

Off we went to finish the route, at mile 30 I turned to head back to my house, while Bob took a different route to get back to his.  Once I was home I stretched, rolled… googled local chiropractors to see if ANY were open on Saturday (no luck), and then thought I’d try to run, maybe it wasn’t as bad as it was this morning?  I made it one minute and was in so much pain I had to stop.  As soon as I got back inside, I called my dad to get his input.  He agreed it was my hip flexor and that it was probably strained.  He thought since it came on so suddenly that it would probably already start feeling better the next day.  I was skeptical.  I spent most of the day icing my hip flexor and laying on the couch.  JMR and I did go out to dinner, so I wasn’t on the couch allll day 🙂

Sunday – 2500 yd swim that I missed on Tuesday and that was it 😦  I was supposed to run 8 miles but walking still didn’t feel great, so running was out.

Total Training Hours: 6:57

I have an appointment with my chiro after work today, so hopefully he can figure out what caused the strain and also fix it!