Weirdness to End January

This week ended with a bit of a scare, but overall I have to be satisfied with my training when taking the massive cold virus that hit me very hard and has continued to linger on.

On Saturday I went out for a run in the afternoon and wasn't expecting much. I wanted it be to slightly more difficult than easy and ran by feel for the entire 8km. Interestingly I got faster with every kilometre and the last two were well under planned marathon pace. I wouldn't say they were easy, but I wasn't pushing all that hard either. I was pleased with the effort.

Later on Saturday I felt some weird pain in my right calf and I wasn't sure what to make of it. The best way I can describe it is "hollow". Perhaps another way is to say that it felt like the muscle was tearing away from the bone. In any case it was not much fun.

This morning the calf seemed fine so I went out for the last run of my recovery week. I chose a totally different route than I'd ever run before and I didn't realize just how hilly it was. Perhaps that was not a very good idea in retrospect since a little past the halfway point my calf twinged again and I had to stop to stretch a little bit. I was far enough from home that walking was not an option, and I didn't have my cellphone on me to call for a ride. I decided to jog the rest of the way and kept the pace very slow. I only felt the calf once more on the final stretch, but that may be because I was really babying it. Ultimately I managed 14.2km and was very happy with both the distance on the run, my cumulative distance for the week (43km even with missing two training runs due to the cold) and the month (223km and an average of 51km/week).

And so the first month of January comes to an end. I hope this calf is not going to be a problem the entire year and must be careful. Less than two months to my next race.