Happy Monday, friends!
It was a busy weekend as usual. Friday was my birthday! I didn’t do anything too exciting: running, a little shopping, and some time with my boys, which was fine by me. Saturday I did a long run, and then we had a toddler birthday party in the afternoon. It was really sunny, so Cullen and I went to the playground that evening to take in the longer hours. Sunday I worked at the store moving some of our inventory from Skinny Raven across the street to our sister store and boutique, Her Tern. If you are a local, I’d highly recommend you check out what we did. It looks awesome! You’ll find the same inventory, but some of your favorites (Dansko shoes and other lifestyle shoes) will now be found at Her Tern. The running shoes and apparel are still at Skinny Raven.
I ran a total of 44 miles this past week, which is the most I’ve run since my hip started bothering me at the end of June. While I have continued to run on my bum hip (which is A LOT better than it used to be), it still isn’t 100%, and it is time to do something about it before I want to run all the races this summer.
I’ve continued to run on it because it has been slowing improving. I also spent a couple weeks trying to figure out if it was my shoes, the snowy conditions, two pair of pants, studded shoes, etc. I was trying anything and everything to see what made it worse versus what made it better. Oddly, I have no pain when running on the treadmill. While this is great, part of the reason I love running is getting outside and being able to run from home every morning. I do know the loose footing from a layer of fresh snow bothers my hip, wearing my Ice Bugs seems to make it worse (possibly too much stability?), as well as two pairs of pants since my hip flexor has to work harder to bring my leg forward.
Even though I want to keep training, it is time to take a break and lay low for a couple of weeks. I have no idea if it will help (It may not be a long enough break.), but I want this cleared up before summer. I’m also going to try to get in for some sort of therapy: cupping, Rolfing, scraping. . . .something of that sort. I have tried ART, which I think did help some. I am not able to do dry needling because it is a tendon and they aren’t able to dry needle tendons. If you have any suggestions, be sure to comment below. It will probably come down to who I am able to get in with sooner than later and the cost of the procedure.
Monday
6 miles | 8:54 average pace
An easy run with virtually no hip pain. I say ‘virtually’ because every once in a while I can feel the hip flexor working harder, but that’s the extent of the pain most days. A lot of frosty eyelashes again this week as the temps were right around zero every morning.
Tuesday
8 miles | 9:06 average pace
30 minutes of weights
I ran with a friend, and she had 8 on her plan, so I opted to run 8 miles as well since I don’t have a strict plan I’m following. I felt pretty good overall. It was dark on one of the paths we were running on, and I tripped on a small snowball in the middle of the trail. I landed on my hands and knees, but thankfully the snow cushioned the fall, and it didn’t hurt that much. After this run, I went tot he gym for a weight lifting session.
Wednesday
4 miles | 8:40 average pace
I had planned to do my tempo workout this day, but given I went fairly long the day before I knew that wouldn’t be a wise choice, so I bumped it back to Thursday and did a short, easy run this day instead. Even though this was a short run, I had some lingering hip pain the rest of the day, which is not a good sign.
Thursday
9 miles | tempo workout
5 x 5 minutes @ tempo (6:35 pace)
30 minutes of weights after the tempo workout
This was definitely an appropriately-hard workout. By the end I was ready to be done, so it seems like my tempo pace is right at 6:35 these days. This was a good, hard workout that makes me so happy inside.
Friday
7 miles | 8:54 average pace
It was my 34th birthday, so I ran 3 + 4 miles for a total of 7 miles. I will not be running my birthday year in kilometers or miles probably ever! So I’ll add the two digits together and run that distance. My hip was not happy on this run. It started hurting after 4 miles and became more achy as I finished up the run. I think it was because I wore my Ice Bugs.
Saturday
10 miles | 8:41 pace
I was thinking I would do 13 miles for a long run this week because I had done 12 miles the weekend before that, and it actually went quite well. But then I added up the mileage I had already run, and I knew I shouldn’t run anymore than 10 miles. Plus, it ended up being really cold, so I was ready to be done after ten.
Sunday
Off
Six days of running in a row meant a day off for me.
Total: 44 miles
It will be weird not running this week, but I have no doubt I’ll be able to keep myself busy. I have meal planning and food prep to do. Plus there is The Bachelor to watch on Monday night, and I’m sure Cullen will keep me busy as usual.
Your running routes are really inspiring, for both photographers and runners. I’m also training for a marathon with SportMe runner app which calculates distance, time, pace and calories.