Two Faces of Training

Knee pain gone, lower right rear end pain gone, and Knight’s five-day sickness gone, I had to rejoice via resumption of my training despite the unexpected visit of this female “issue.” 

So right after reading a couple of articles in the web which assured me that I would be safe on my third day (this surfing had me encountering Uta Pippig‘s much publicized historic finish in the Boston Marathon 1996), I prepared my running accouterments for my heat training (HT) which was originally scheduled yesterday. Well, I had to adjust the original date in the training chart courtesy of my in-demand (and very busy) “coach” because of this womanly woe. I know, this 15-k HT was already one-week delayed. And this was not all. I also missed four days of my training! It’s no surprise if panic is now creeping toward me and this lull has already given me two bad dreams. Arrrgggggh! 

It’s time to put an end to this!!!

So today at 12:45 pm, I saw myself bouncing back. 

The first 8k of my run reaffirmed that my left knee had been healed. Unquestionably, the rest I took from the training and the regular cold compress Idid were responsible for this. What I continued monitoring was the pain in my lower right bottom which recurred. I did not welcome the discomfort though it was bearable and I could still run.  In addition to the soreness, I also felt a muscle contraction in my right leg. Warning: the dreaded cramps! Without a second thought, I stopped and turned off “my tracks” application to do some stretching at the corner of BF Resort Drive and Aventine Hills for five minutes. If I did not feel my muscles relaxing and the pain abating, I would cut short my heat training at 8.58k instead of 13.14k (short of 1.86k to complete the planned mileage). 

I proceeded with the last stage of my run which could be labeled as “medium effort” as my speed slowed down unlike last February 12 which served as a test run after my injury. That Wednesday night, I was faster making me go beyond the 5-k scheduled distance. 

Hmmmm… I think it would be unfair if I blame my muscles for this because I knew what decreased my pace.

Here they are, the herd of goats that were also busy undergoing a kind of serious training – survival!

Seeing the parallelism in what we were preoccupied with under the heat of the sun and capturing the beautiful scenery they created were truly hard to ignore. 

It was also in this small oval in front of  the Franciscan Sisters Handmaids of the Immaculate, Aventine Hills where I tarried for a while and finally had a passing goat …er… a young man help me come up with this documentation that showed my kind of training which is more serious (really really serious????) than those billy and nanny goats.