Slogging through

This week has been rough to say the least.

I'm fighting some horrendous cough untouchable by over-the-counter meds. Thank god I have friends in high places (doctors) because I currently don't have a primary care doc. Some codeine-laced cough medicine and a Z-pack and I'm finally sleeping through the night.. Only problem is that I can't take narcotics during the day, so I'm doing my best not to cough constantly into my patients' faces. Guess my office is getting their money's worth out of the masks they buy for us.

I know there are articles out there that preach not to run if you're ill "below the neck" - aka chest cold. I went back and forth on whether to keep running this week, and eventually decided to because:

1. I missed an entire week of training for my knee pain and halved a second week while recovering, so I'm down a 12- and a 13-miler. My longest run so far has been 10, twice.
2. My cough is more dry than productive, except in the mornings
3. I cough way less/not at all while running. (It's only once I stop that I pretty much die.)

Monday - 3 miles easy

Winter in Pittsburgh has been abysmal. We get a few inches of snow every few days and NOBODY shovels their sidewalks. I don't have Yaktrax or any kind of traction device for my shoes so I'm at the mercy of a few streets' worth of reliably clear sidewalk. There's a pretty simple 1ish mile stretch mostly down Fifth Ave from Shady to about Morewood... tack on a few tenths of a mile from my house and you've got my go-to 3 mile round-tripper. It's definitely not flat, but not too brutal given Pittsburgh's hill situation.

Splits: 10:22, 10:19, 10:21 (Consistency!!)

My legs felt a little heavy and I couldn't quite find a rhythm on this run. I was keeping my effort super easy, but sometimes that makes me feel like something is just "off" with my stride and my legs just feel unnatural- I can't really describe it. The last quarter mile my mechanics felt so strange that I eventually gave up and started "tiptoe" running, which is how I naturally ran when I first started running but resulted in horrendous chronic shin splints, and I haven't run that way since. (After multiple months of PT, custom orthotics and completely readjusting my mechanics, I've been a heel-striker. I'm aware that's not ideal. Story for another day.) Seriously, forefoot running has never felt so good as it did at the end of this run. I felt like my body finally lined up and started coordinating itself and I was bounding across the earth like a gazelle and all was perfect. I only mention this because it inspired my treadmill strategy on Wednesday.

Wednesday - 7 treadmill miles

Between my cough and generally fatigued legs lately, I knew I needed a rest day Tuesday. Wednesday began a 2-day snow/rain/sleet storm that was supposed to last until Thursday night, so I knew I'd be stuck with a 7-mile treadmill run one of those two days. Lately I feel the need to get these longer midweek runs over with so they don't hang over my head, so I sucked it up and headed to the gym with Brian after work. My plan was basically to last as long as I possibly could, whether that meant walk/running or taking some breaks to lift between miles, since the treadmill really exacerbates that weird uncoordinated stride feeling (my theory is muscle imbalance related to my leg length discrepancy) and lately I've given up after a mile or two on the treadmill. 

I set the speed to 6.0 and the incline to random level 1 (0-1.5% varying every 30 seconds). To give you a better sense of normal for me, my half-marathon-training easy treadmill runs in the past were about a 9:30 pace at random lv4, which is 0-3.9%. It's been a little hard for me to embrace the fact that if I want more miles, my body can only handle that with less of everything else (speed, hills). Oh well.

Anyhow, within a few minutes I was already feeling the weirdness. I can only describe it as feeling like my legs are not quite in sync with each other, I'm a little off balance, and I'm kind of uncoordinated. I was inspired by the end of Monday's run and decided to test the waters forefoot-striking. Felt perfect. So I figured I'd run normally at any incline less than 0.8%, and run on my toes anything at or above that. I really never wound up having to go more than 1.5 or 2 minutes in any given mode, and it seriously kept things feeling more normal than I've felt on a treadmill in probably a year.

Splits: 10:00 for 7 miles, no stops.

By the time I was done, I had baby blisters underneath the balls of my feet, just enough to make things slightly uncomfortable. My fault for not wearing running socks, but I had never expected to last 7 entire miles on the treadmill. It's always nice when you surprise yourself! Cardio-wise this felt nice and easy, pleasant even. I think I'll still try to avoid the treadmill if at all possible, but when I can't, hopefully this new magic trick keeps working.