Road Rhythm Recovery Run

PT killed me yesterday so I ended up swimming 1600 yards in the pool with Blake instead of running. Also since I ran Tuesday night, I opted for the 36 hour rest instead of pushing the mileage too hard. I drove over to Karen's house this morning for a 5-mile tempo run. We left her house at 6:15 for an easy 2-mile warm-up. After a quick bathroom stop, we were off and running down the UCI bike path 2.5 out and back. The target for today was 6:00 average. We started a little slow, probably because my initial sense of pace is slightly off given all the leg strengthening work I've been doing. As the miles went along we fell more and more into a good rhythm, and starting dropping the mile splits down. Sometime around the 3rd mile I fell into form and clicked off the last three miles like a metronome, progressively faster for each. Splits for today's workout were 6:11, 6:04, 6:01, 5:51, 5:50. We cooled down 2 miles back to her house for a solid 9 miles for the day.

It was very satisfying at how comfortable this pace still is for me, despite low mileage weeks and all my knee/quad/hamstring issues from the last several weeks. My IT Band was about 85% during the workout, and loosened up (in a good way) as the workout progressed. I never came close to getting anaerobic, and felt like I could have kept cruising along for another 5 miles. My plan is to continue doing nothing but easy, rhythm, and tempo runs (nothing below 5:30) for a couple weeks so I can finally give my body a chance to recover while I start building mileage again. To top off the workout, after I cooled off, I got to take a full lower-body ice bath in the iCool!

Lastly, I've been looking around for some nutritional supplments/healthy alternatives to some of the crap I've been eating lately (especially at work: cookies, donuts etc.). I was recently given some free samples of Isagenix to try out, as workout supplements, and nutritional replacements. I sampled it for the first time after my workout. The Chocolate Clean Crisp Lean Bar is a winner, tasted good, and I didn't feel gross after eating it. I tried the milk/vitamin shake, and although it may have worked, I either didn't mix it well enough or should have used a blender, because it did not taste good going down. I was fortunate to hold it down until lunch. I have one more sample shake to try (maybe after a longer run next week), as well as a few other items, but the jury is still out for me on Isagenix.