With all the hectic nonsense and late nights of last week, including a couple nights where I woke up, brain going full-blast, usually at about 3am, unable to fall back asleep until maybe an hour before my alarm went off, I was grateful to get a couple solid nights' sleep earlier this week. Before the work blowup, I'd had a couple iffy nights but was mostly sleeping well and long, 8-9 hours a night, which is basically my sweet spot. The last few nights have been less-good, though, and my 5 mile run yesterday was really kind of not-great.
The first half of it went pretty well, but I definitely felt like I was wearing out more quickly than I would like, and it wasn't like I was pushing myself too hard on speed--11:30-12:00 pace. I felt my form deteriorating, and my left knee in particular was hurting a bit. I thought maybe there was a camber on the path that was causing it, since it only started bothering me at a certain point on the trail. I started focusing on form more and was able to push through without it getting any worse, but it wasn't one of my best runs, and everything in my left leg felt kind of unstable and out of whack by the time I finished up.
So that, combined with a general grumpiness I've been feeling but had ascribed to last week's work nonsense, had me a bit worried. I slept all right last night but not well, again, so I popped into Google, "running not sleeping well" and all the results that came back were basically in consensus: runners get symptoms of insomnia when they're overtraining.
Crap.
So between that, the moodiness, and the fact that I've been cutting calories pretty stringently to try to get back to goal weight without seeing corresponding results on the scale for the past couple of weeks, I think it's safe to say I've hit a little bit of a wall here, and something's gotta change. It's disappointing, because even a couple of days ago I felt like things were going pretty well, but with all the different things adding up, it's becoming clear that I need to tweak the plan. Any one of these things on its own, no biggie, but I don't want to jeopardize my race because I got overambitious.
My knee is still a little cranky this morning, so I'm icing it. I'm also resting today instead of squeezing in the 3 miles my plan calls for, and tomorrow is a planned rest day as well. Hopefully that will be enough to persuade my knee to chill out and let me run in Philly on Saturday without too many issues. I'd planned on taking the first 5K easy and speeding up for the final 10K, but now I'm thinking it'll be best to just slow run the whole thing and be happy to finish. Slow miles > no miles, right?
I had also been planning on putting my cut on pause today and tomorrow so that I was going into the race with sufficient glycogen stores (and let's be real - Saturday and Sunday because there is so much good food in Philly), but that pause is going to be a bit longer, until after the half. I've been tracking my calorie count and weight loss and have a reasonable idea of what my actual TDEE is, so I'm going to eat much closer to that for the next month(ish) than I have been. I'm still about 7 pounds over my goal weight, and about 11 over my lowest from last fall, but my clothes fit and based on some of the better runs I've had lately, I can still move pretty well under good conditions, so I'll work with what I've got.
As far as training goes, I'm running the Higdon Half Novice 2 plan and while I could drop back to Novice 1, the mileage on most of the remaining weeks is basically the same, just arranged differently, so I'm going to try to scale back on speed, run easy, and stick to the mileage the plan calls for. I'd also shifted things around to account for running a 15K race this weekend (Week 7) instead of a 10K in Week 9 as called for, which means that Week 8 ends up being a lower-volume week anyway, and that I can do my 10 mile run at the same time as the SCRR course preview run during Week 9.
Hopefully between that and adjusting my intake, it will be enough. I'm fairly sure I'm kissing my 'A' goal for the half goodbye (2:15 / 10:17 pace) but I think 'B' is still doable (2:30 / 11:26) and totally respectable for my first time. Then after that... lose those last 7 pounds and base building, I suppose, so that next time around I can be stronger and better prepared.
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