OK, I wasn't as recovered as I'd thought.
Yesterday my legs seemed OK. A little bit of doms and stiffness in the calves but nothing major so I wasn't concerned at doing the planned 9 miles.
When I set off it was still light so I opted to do a route with the first 4 miles off road. That was probably a mistake. After the snow and rain it was incredibly muddy - huge puddles well above ankle depth, constant wet mud that even the fell shoes couldn't cope with. Running downhill was precarious, uphill draining and even on the flat I must have resembled a speed skater (minus the speed) as my foot slipped to the side with every step. Mind you, the plus side of that was that I got no groin pain from the slipping whereas a year ago each slip would have been accompanied by a very sharp tearing sensation.
Anyway, the first half mile felt fine, a little sluggish perhaps, but nothing major; it was at the first uphill I suddenly felt drained. It was steep, it was off road and it was slippy but it felt far worse than that. My calves felt only slightly more sore but they also felt dead and unresponsive, and overall I felt drained. I tried to lift the pace but just couldn't get going. In fact I think I stopped 6 times each for about 30 seconds. Even on the on road downhills I didn't seem to be able to do more than jog and in only one mile could I get the pace below 9 minute miles - I just didn't have it in me.
At 6.5 miles I decided to bail out. It was the first opportunity I'd had to cut the run short and it meant I did 8.2 rather than the prescribed 9.0.
When I got in my legs felt OK. There was no stiffening up, in fact they felt looser, and that's continued into today when they feel almost back to normal, so maybe the run did me some good after all.
I did also decide to switch the dieting off for yesterday evening. On Sunday I did a tough run and had a deficit of just over 1000kcals from maintenance. On Monday I was 900 under maintenance. That's fine as a rule but I did wonder if the overall feeling of fatigue while running was because I needed to restock the glycogen levels a little more after Sunday's run so last night featured pineapple upside down cake, 2 helpings of ice cream (big helpings), a few biscuits and 3 extra slices of bread.
Naturally, that is temporarily reflected on the scales today but I do think it was probably the right thing to do.
14/02 171.8 lb 18.5% BF
21/02 170.0 lb 18.2% BF
22/02 167.6 lb 17.4% BF
23/02 168.8 lb 17.6% BF
I think today will be a rest day, just to make sure.
4 comments:
I like the post title.
Your run at the weekend was very very long, so no wonder you felt a little tired (and I am sure you are right about the refuelling too)-Plus the terrain you were running on was not ideal. At least the run helped to loosen up the muscles- enjoy your rest day.
Those are some huge deficits: lots of the male runners at the gym I go to are aiming for similar weight targets to yours, and they're struggling with 500kcal deficits and fatigue. One of them (we bitch and moan to each other about our weight hehe) tried to go 900 under maintainance for a couple of days and ended up in A&E after keeling over on his 17-miler for the week (he's training for the London Marathon) so please be careful!
I know how difficult it is to balance endurance running and weight loss but I think you did the right thing. And that slippy surface sounds like a nightmare.
Take care!
I'm really not surprised you felt tired after that 21miler. That's a heulluva distance to run, and with the last 8 @ MP, you were bound to take a little longer than normal to recover. I agree with jess (and you) that eating a bit more will probably help. But also, just give your body time to get over it!
I ran 3 meters this morning over muddy grass and nearly saw my a$$, you did how many miles!!!!! You hinted at it & Alison & Jess speak the cautions to be headed - consider yourself told :-)
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