Recovery week 2 (and still creaky)

This is the latest addition to our living room, an original watercolor we picked up when down to Mount Desert Island. It's a local scene by a local artist that's just the right size to fit over our fireplace mantel but more importantly we both liked it!

My running this past week has deliberately been reduced and low key. I've been doing alternate days of rest and running in an effort to get fully recovered before I start building up some base mileage for Boston. One consistent factor that seems to remain is an overall tightness and some deep soreness in the legs. Until this is gone and the legs start to feel fresh after my short easy runs I won't consider the recovery phase over. Right now I'm planning on 4 weeks of just easy running.

This past week:
Sunday - 1 hour run, slow pace and got very tight and stiff by the end of it
Monday - rest
Tues - easy 5 miles, about 8min pace, again tiring and sore at end of run
Weds - rest
Thur - 1 hour+, 8mile run, again very tight legs and had to stop and stretch at 6 miles after I developed some cramping in the calves and hamstrings. I was able to continue but only at a very easy pace.
Fri - another rest day
Sat - easy 5 miles, a bit better today with the legs tight at first but better later in the run. I was then 'recruited' to jump in the pond to help put it away for the winter but used waders instead of bare legs in the cold water (about 10-15C).

I was reading Nate Jenkins blog last week and was blown away by some of his numbers, especially the amount of marathon pace or faster that he had done in the past 6 weeks (103 miles). It was a rainy day in St Andrews today and I had some time to go through my training log to see how I compared. Of course my average mileage was only 50/week over the past 20 weeks, compared to Nate's 100+ for 30 weeks. However, I kept up in the amount of faster running with about 70 miles at or faster than marathon pace for the 6 weeks before MDI. On average this worked out to 25% of total mileage which was more than I expected. Anyway I thought it was interesting and you can see it in the plot above.

Boyden Lake calls for the morning and Andrew and I are planning a shorter run. We'll probably do about 90+ minutes and 12 miles at a nice easy pace (are you reading this Andrew??).

If you get a chance please give a shout out to Kate who is all nerved up to run her 2nd marathon in Auckland, New Zealand. And don't forget Grellan who is running his 4th marathon in Dublin but is on tender hooks due to some injury issues. Good luck to them and others who are racing or preparing to race!

Have a great week all!