therunnerwithin

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog and weekly training logs, you know I’ve been having some very good running days. Just in the last 3-4 weeks I’ve earned my fastest mile twice and fastest 5K just about every week. Sadly my running streak of good running days came to end last night when I couldn’t complete my 3 mile run last night.

After work yesterday I headed over to the local park I run in occasionally to log some miles. I knew I had been pretty fast lately but at the same time needed to try and take it easy to avoid any injuries.

Upon starting my run, I was feeling pretty good for the most part. The park is fairly shaded so it felt rather cool. I told myself, slow and steady try to aim for a 10:30 pace. Asides from my long distance runs my shorter runs have been between the 9:45-10:00 pace bracket, which is super fast for me. Knowing I had plans to do a speed workout with Sam the next day I didn’t want to kill myself over a fast 3 mile run.

Not even a quarter mile in and I fell a dull pounding in my head, which is odd as I’ve never had or gotten a headache on a run before. It wasn’t anything too painful so I continued on with my run thinking, hoping, praying it would pass. It didn’t, I evaluated and adjusted my form and that seemed to help. Then as I closed in on a mile I had this unsettling discomfort in my diaphragm. You know that feeling when you chug a lot of water and then start running? Yeah that’s the feeling I was having. Yet, I did not chug any what, I had a sip prior to starting the run. I made it to about a mile and a half when I decided to walk it out for a minute. Knowing something was not right I made the decision to cut my run short at 2 miles and then just cool down for a mile.

During my cool down walk I had to remind myself that you just cannot expect every run to be a “good” one. I’ve had lots of great runs lately, I am getting faster and stronger. Heck even my that run was still a great run just because I didn’t complete the mileage I had hoped to. Yet I had to get to the source of the poor run because I did not like the discomfort I was feeling. I hadn’t eaten anything different that day than any of my previous evening runs and I had been staying well hydrate, I even filled up my water bottle four times at work. I have been a little tired lately, more so with speed work and the strength training I’ve been adding in. I actually had a hard time rolling out of bed that morning. With that being said I came to the conclusion that my body was trying to tell me just that. A couple minutes into my walk that dull pounding in my head had subsided and I didn’t have that nauseous discomfort.

With a 12 mile run to knock out this weekend before I begin tapering I opted to forgo my speed workout with Sam this evening. I thought about attempting another low mileage, easy pace run but decided that as a runner I can ignore the pain and signs we all tend to do. While I am not trying to necessarily PR at this event, I want to do well. I know I must take the precautions needed to ensure that I can enjoy what little time I have left of the “running season” here in Florida.

A special thanks to Amanda over at Running with Spoons for allowing me to “Think out Loud.”