RTTC #229 Proof of Time Half Marathon Training Week 4

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali walks through every workout from Week 4 of her Proof of Time half marathon training… the wins, the hard ones, and everything she had to rearrange when life got lifey. 

She digs into the "2 minutes per mile slower than race pace" advice that gets passed around constantly online, and explains exactly why it doesn't work for back-of-the-pack and run/walk runners the way it's intended to. 

Dr. Ali also shares what she's learning in real time about pacing, run-walk intervals, and how cumulative training stress across an entire week affects a single workout. 

If you've ever had a run feel completely off and couldn't figure out why, this episode will give you the bird's-eye-view framework to make sense of it.

Learn more about Stronger. Faster. Finisher. !

Ready to cross the finish line stronger, faster, and prouder at your next runDisney race? 

Get personalized support, smarter training, and strategies designed specifically for slow, back-of-the-pack runners who want to build a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, have time for character photos and energy to enjoy the Disney Parks. Learn more about the Stronger. Faster. Finisher. Program today and be the first to know when doors open!

Free Resources

• Follow me on Instagram @rundisneydpt
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• Check out FREE training plans for injury-prone runDisney runners on my website. 
• Book a Free 30 minute Call with me if you're wondering how you should train and if working together makes sense.
  
  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about Proof of Time Half Marathon Training Week 4. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for slow, back-of-the-pack Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Ali, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong, have a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, and have time to stop for character photos. Keep listening if your goal is to PR in fun, cross the finish line without feeling broken, and have energy to enjoy the Disney parks. Okay, week four had its ups and downs. For sure. So my speed workouts are Monday and Wednesday. I've switched it so I have a rest day on Tuesday and cross-training on Thursday, long run Friday, rest on Saturday, and cross-training on Sunday. I got four workouts done. I ended up making three rest days, and I had to make a decision of what workout do I move around? What workouts do I continue to do? How do I make this work for me? So I did have to question myself of, okay, what is my priority? Should I keep my speed workouts this week? Should I keep my cross training this week? Should I move my long run this week? So I'm gonna get into all of that. So first day Monday, speed workout. I decided to do a 45-minute 10K race pace tempo run. So if you are new to my world, I have four speed workouts that I recommend runners do 30 2010, progression run, hill workouts, and a tempo run. Tempo run is my favorite way to check pace when you're in a training block. So let me back up. Of course, my favorite, favorite way is pace testing, right? I was talking about this recently on one of my coaching calls that, you know, sometimes you will hear on the internet, on social media, on Instagram, wherever you're getting your information, that the recommendation for your easy runs is to run two minutes per mile slower than race pace. Where that information becomes problematic is for the group of runners that I work with, where some of us are new, most of us don't consider ourselves fast, some of us don't even consider ourselves runners. We tend to be back of the pack. We like Disney first, found out that Disney does races later. And it's not that we were runners going and finding different races across the country and found out, oh, we can do it at Disney. Now, of course, there are going to be some of you in this category, but I would say the majority of runners that I work with say to me, I wanted to get healthier and running was a good option. I really like Disney. And I found out that Disney does races. What a great excuse to go to Disney. Or other runners will say, I was at Disney on a race weekend and I saw people wearing their medals. I liked the medals. I thought it was so cute, cool, fun that these people got to earn this medal and walk around Disney, run around Disney during the race and then go to Disney afterward. Or, you know, my sister, brother, cousin, aunt does run Disney and they got me into it. Something like that. So when we hear phrases like run two minutes per mile slower than race pace, that can be problematic because what the heck is my race pace? I go out and wing it, right? Like that's that's what I hear runners say. Like I just I go and run. Like I have no idea what my pace is going to be on any given day on my long run. I have no idea is today's long run going to take an hour or is it gonna take three hours? I have no idea. And that aspect of it, that having no idea, is it gonna take an hour? Is it gonna take three? And maybe, maybe those are massively wild numbers of a difference. Maybe, maybe you don't, maybe you have it narrowed down more than a two-hour gap, but maybe you don't. I don't know. And that creates some anxiety. At least that would create anxiety for me. Like going out for a run and not being able to tell Royal, I'll be back in two hours. But being like, okay, well, maybe I'm back in two hours or maybe I'm back in five, I don't know. Like, I can't plan my day around that, right? Like the whole day is gone at that point. And also, Royal will worry about me. Where I run, I do live in a safe area, but people in Vegas drive crazy. And I know everyone says that, but being a 24-hour city, people are there are so many third shift people, right? So if I'm running in the morning, I would have to look up the statistics on this. But with, you know, ever almost everything being 24 hours around here, there, I believe there are more third shift overnight workers than where I used to live, as an example. And so people will be getting off work at five, six, seven in the morning, driving home. Some of those people do what other people do after work and go out for drinks because you can do that here. And so we have drunk drivers at all hours of the day. Now, not saying other places don't, but the the likelihood goes up and up and up. I mean, there are just so many times that I see on the news 10 in the morning crash, blood alcohol level of astronomical amounts, stuff like that. So it can be dangerous here. And so even though I live in a relatively safe area, there's always something. Um, it it worries Royal. And so he does want to know within reason like how long this run is going to take me. So I am able to be pretty accurate. I will tell him, oh, this long run should take me 97 minutes, or, you know, this long run will take me three hours. Like I know if it's a 10 mile long run for a half marathon training, I anticipate my half marathons take me three hours. So that 10 mile long run is going to take me three hours. I will give him some information of some wiggle room and I'll say, well, if I walk more, here's here's like the upper end of that range. So I'll say three at worst, three and a half hours, but most likely three hours. Some days the upper limit is what it ends up taking because I I just feel it right out the gate. I'm like, you know what? I'm not feeling running, and I'm definitely not feeling running faster today. I'm feeling like I want to run slower or walk more. So today's long run is gonna take me probably three and a half hours. At its quickest, it would be three hours, but plan on three and a half. And he gets nervous when I come back too soon because he's like, you know, I'm pretty accurate. So anyway, with the workouts, like the long run should be easy. And so I have runners who want to test race pace because, like I was saying, we don't know. Oh, where I was going with that. My God, where am I today? Where I was going with that is if you are hearing like two minutes per mile slower than race pace, if you don't know what race pace is, you can't add two minutes per mile to that. So then you just go out and run, right? Another problem that comes up is two minutes per mile slower on race pace for us as slower runners, back of the pack runners, that pace could legitimately be a walking pace. Right. I did have this conversation with a runner on a coaching call. And because I was talking about the long run and how, like how you will hear other people say make it two minutes per mile slower than race pace. And I was like, I don't, I don't recommend that for this audience because it, you don't know what race pace is. And that's where I was going with the conversation. But she brought up an excellent point that I didn't even think of that two minutes per mile slower than race pace could be walking pace for us. And that hasn't come into play with these other coaches and these other runners because those runners are running six minute per mile paces, seven minute per mile paces, eight minute per mile paces. So 10 minute per mile would be two minutes per mile slower than that eight, right? That's that's not their walking pace. Their walking pace could still be a 16 minute per mile pace, but they're not inching close to that. But for us, that could be a walking pace, right? Like if you're aiming for a 14 minute per mile finish, like running time finish, two minutes per mile slower than that could be 16 minutes per mile. That could be a pace that you can walk at. So does that mean this long run technically you should be walking at? I mean, you could, you could walk a long run every once in a while. Absolutely. I did it for the 10 miler, the three-course challenge for springtime surprise. I had to walk a bunch of those long runs because life got lifey. That was fine. I ended up walking the 10-miler anyway, right? I think I talked about this where I walked the 5K. I paced one of my runners for the 10 miler. One of our other runners joined us, but the plan originally was anybody can join. I am making sure that this particular runner who has asked me to get her across the finish line and whoever wants to join us can. And we did. It was great. It was a great time until I lost them. I'm so sorry. I still feel very, still feel very bad about that. But you may have to walk it. That doesn't mean all of your long runs are going to be walking. But if you were to listen to the two minutes per mile slower than race pace advice, that is potentially what your pace is. But that's why I recommend pace testing, because easy run pace is going to be faster than your walk, right? Now I'm not talking like huffing it like speed walking walk. I'll have to narrow this down to really get into the nitty-gritty, but an easy pace run is some form of a run or a jog where your two feet aren't on the ground at the exact same time during your gate cycle. That's the difference between running and walking. But you can't listen to the two minute per mile slower because that potentially will happen to you. And it doesn't happen to the elite runners. It doesn't happen to these other fast runners because they're running so much faster than their walking pace that two minutes per mile slower, it they there's no overlap. But for us, it could be. There could be overlap, right? Like, I mean, even for me, let's say I want to do a 13 minute per mile half marathon running two minutes per mile slower. Yes, I can jog that. Like I could, I could do a bouncy walk, but I also can walk at a 14-minute, 30-second per mile pace. It's pushing it, which is why a few minutes ago I just said, like, I need to like figure out. You guys are listening to me figure this out in real time. Like I had this conversation last night. And so I will have more details coming soon at some point. Who knows? Ask me questions about it and I will answer them. Right. But so we could come into that. So anyway, when we're talking about, well, I can't, I want to run race pace at some point. Can I do that during the long run? No, you can't, no, I don't recommend it. During a training block, no, I don't recommend it. And that's where going through the different phases of a running journey will benefit you. Don't skip the build phase. You know, many runners will just stop running, stop working out, give themselves a break because they're burnt out, they're exhausted, maybe they're injured, but give themselves a break after a race and then they'd wait until the next training block starts for their next time to start running. So springtime surprise ends April 19th. And then, oh, I get two months off until wine and dine training starts on June 15th. And then you're starting at zero again. You've gotten out of shape because those two months you will get out of the shape that you're in now. You won't necessarily go all the way back to zero, but two months is a significant amount of time off. And if you use that time as the build phase, you can practice running race pace. Then that's what I'm doing right now. I didn't take time off after springtime surprise. I took the designated two weeks rest and recovery, as I recommend everybody do. And the harder the race or the longer the race, the newer the race distance that you do, the longer those, the longer those rest and recovery weeks should be. So you may have three rest and recovery weeks. Most two is plenty, but there's the occasional third week that needs to come in there. Anyway, so you can practice doing race pace on a long run, and I'll talk about that later in this episode, but you can't do that if you've given yourself two months off. Because I recommend doing that before the training block or early in the beginning of a training block. But when you can't do that, how are you ever gonna test race pace? Well, that's where the tempo run comes in. And so I did a 45-minute 10K race pace tempo run. So 45 minutes total, start with a 10-minute warm-up, end with a 10-minute cooldown, and in between do the run-walk intervals at designated paces. So I had to figure out if I want to finish my 10K in under one hour, eight minutes, what pace do I need to run based on what finish time I want and what pace I want to walk or what pace I plan to walk during my intervals, because that's important, right? We can't plan for how fast we're going to run if we don't know how fast we're going to walk. And if I want to finish in an hour eight for a 10K, I also need to remember that I'm probably going to run longer than race distance. So I'm I'm still figuring out the data on it because I opened up Stronger Faster Finisher to my wait list. And so I've been programming for them. So I did ask a couple of weeks ago on Instagram how far everybody goes, how far over everybody goes on race day. And I have those numbers. I haven't had time to do anything with them. And so, but you need to plan that you're going to run more than race distance. It's the race distance. This is this is kind of mind-boggling to people. Race distance, the 6.2, the official race distance. When it's a certified course, there's a very specific path. They they basically draw out the shortest path somebody could take during that run. So they're running tangents, meaning they're going, if it's turning a corner, they're running from the outside corner direct to the inside corner. And they're not like running around the bend. And so those are called running tangents. So they're running tangents, and that's the shortest distance somebody could take and still have done the 6.2 miles or the 13.1 miles. So that means somebody who's not running tangents is running more. And then us run walkers, when we are going from side to side with running on the left, walking on the right, you're also adding distance there. So you are going to need to plan that you are running, let's just say 6.6 miles, 6.6 K instead of, no, that was right. Oh, Alley, Alley. 10K, 6.2 miles. Plan that you're running like 6.6 miles. So I actually have to be able to run 6.6 miles in under one hour, eight minutes, which means I need to run even faster. And then being run walk, it's not just dividing the finish time by the distance because I have to factor in how fast I'm walking. And so I did this on the treadmill the other day. And there's been discussion on is my treadmill accurate? I don't know. I believe my treadmill is accurate, but how old is your treadmill? How's the wear and tear? Does the belt glide evenly and smoothly? Is does it need to be calibrated? Like has it been moved and have things bumped and stuff like that? There are ways to Google it and check online to see how you check to see if your treadmill is right. But I did this tempo run on the on the treadmill, and I wanted to see how it would feel. And looking back, like literally looking back at my notes, this was a dumb thing for me to do this week. However, I I will I didn't know it at the time. And I will discuss that later once we get into my long run. So I did this tempo run starting at a 6.9 for race pace. And so that would be 8 minute and 42 seconds per mile running pace because I need to average less than a 10 minute 30 second per mile pace. I didn't write down the exact number that the average needs to be. So between my running and my walking, I'm likely going to need to run an 842 or something similar. And I alternated that with my easy pace with a 3.8 mile per hour for walking. So total 24 minutes of running because my run intervals, three minutes running, one minute walking. And so instead of doing 25 minutes of running, I just, I just ended it at the 24 minutes. I don't think that was a big difference. It felt surprisingly good. I was prepared for it to feel awful. And so maybe I worked myself up so much in my head that that I knew I could do it once it started because I just like built it so much in my head. Now, do not get me wrong, running 6.9 miles per hour for three minutes straight was tiring. It was doable for this time frame. And I have four months before race day. So I do think that's plenty of time to be able to run that race pace for longer. And maybe that's a tempo run that I'll do like every other month or something and add one more round of running race pace. So right now I alternated. So I ran race pace, then I ran easy, then I ran race pace, then I ran easy, then I ran race pace, then I ran easy. So maybe next time I do it, I run race pace for two rounds, then I run easy, and then I run race pace for one round or two rounds and go from there until I work my way up to doing the entire time running race pace. I don't know. So the timeline would get me right before race day-ish if I did that. I'll have to think about it. Overall, I felt really good. On my paced long run for this week, I have a note in here. I literally write on my paced long run in 10 days, I may consider doing it on the treadmill to guarantee I'm on pace to see how doable it is, but I also need to look at the temperature. And I looked at the temperature and the race pace for 10 days from the time of this tempo run was not going to work out. So after this tempo run, I did lower body strength. I had to be done by 45 minutes because we had to go to Substrata, we had to go to the office because it was Memorial Day. And product needs to be made, product needs to be mixed. So instead of royal calling in an employee, we go. We own the business. This is just what has to happen. And that was fine. I just needed to plan for it. So I made sure to do that. Got, you know, got everything gathered up, did the strength workout. I didn't do, I just used my machine. I just did lower body, which I am trying to split it up between two lower body days and two upper body days and just see how that goes. And so I did it. I finished in 45 minutes. I didn't get to every exercise and I didn't get to multiple rounds. But that was, that was fine. Overall, it was good. And I I did add lateral lunges and curtsy lunges this time to make sure that I got lateral glutes. Because to make sure that everything is well rounded. So I recommend hitting all major muscle groups. And when I use my machine, I'm not doing lateral glutes. And that's a really big muscle group for just stability as a runner. It's what keeps your pelvis level when you're standing on one leg. And we've already talked about that when you're running, you're always on only one leg if you're if you're touching the ground. Of course, there are flying feet picks, right? So at one point you're off the ground completely, but at one point or at different points, one leg is on the ground by itself. And so to keep your pelvis level, you do need stability in those lateral glutes. And then I also added in inversion for the ankle, e version for the ankle, and dorsiflexion because watching my videos back, I think one of my on one of my feet, I think I'm dragging my foot a little too much. And that would go hand in hand with what I see on my shoes. But I do like kick my own heels just walking. Um, so I didn't know if it was that, but I might be dragging my foot. So, which would line up with some um disc issues I had years ago and just um, you know, likelihood of some some weakness that has happened on that side. Anyway, overall, workout was good, had to push it. I did it on the treadmill again because I wanted to guarantee that I was hitting that pace. Tuesday and Wednesday, I had to make rest days. So Tuesday, rest day anyway. Wednesday, I had to make a rest day. And, you know, I didn't write notes in here, but I'm pretty sure I had to make it a rest day because I did. I went to Substrata again. I went to Royal's office again that day. Um, he needed to be down there, and so I needed to drive him. So I actually took the opportunity to set up a time to go to lunch with a friend who lives down near his office that I haven't seen in ye years. I don't think we've seen each other in person in years. So I had messaged her from the previous week and was like, hey, can you get lunch? And she couldn't that week. And so I made it a point to go back down the following Wednesday because I knew Royal had to be there again. And so I would, I would drive him. And then Levi got to go too. Leave, I am definitely secondary human. So if Royal's not at home, Levi pouts all day. And so he's when he's left with secondary human, he just doesn't like it as much. So it is what it is. So we went as a family down to the office, which meant Thursday came and Thursday was supposed to be a cross-training day. I had to make the decision of do I keep this a cross-training day or do I make this a speed workout? And so I asked the question: what's my priority? Well, my priority is getting faster. I'm going for this proof of time. I need to get faster. Will cross-training get me faster? No, cross-training will help my ability to breathe better and be fit, however, not fast, right? So there's a distinction there for somebody who is having trouble. Let's say it this way. If somebody comes to me, let's say I have two people, two runners come to me. One runner says, I could go all day, like my legs could go all day, if only I could control my breathing or I could control my heart rate. My heart rate gets too high, my breathing gets too much, I can't catch my breath, versus somebody else says, Oh, I could breathe all day. I just can't get my legs to go faster, right? So those are two different scenarios of two people who are having trouble finishing the way they want because of the first person is saying that their legs could go all day, their lungs give out before their legs do. And the second person is saying my legs give out before my lungs do. So that first person is having cardiovascular fitness problems where they can't catch their breath. They can't, you know, get enough oxygen and breath in. And the second person can get enough oxygen and breath in. They want to be able to push themselves harder, but they can't get their legs to do it. So two different scenarios. The first person who their lungs give out first, they need cardiovascular fitness. They need cross-training. The second person where their legs give out first, they would need speed or strength. And I would dive into a few more questions with that person to really figure out which one it is. But so for each of these people, if they came to me with the same scenario I'm having where I had to make an extra rest day, if these people had to make an extra rest day, person one, runner one, I would say skip speed workout, do cross training. For runner number two, I would say, skip cross training, do speed workout. So that's where I am at. That's my boat right now, where I want to get faster. It's not my heart and my lungs that are giving up before my legs give up, right? So instead of doing cross training on Thursday, I did a speed workout. And this week it was a Hill workout. And so it went much better than it went last time. If you followed me, if you follow me on Instagram, you saw like a month ago or two, no, two weeks ago. It's happening every other week. Two weeks ago, I had to lay on the floor for an hour after my Hill workout. It was early, it was rough. I had to drink some maple syrup. My sugar levels just plummeted. And I know it was sugar levels because drinking the maple syrup made it better. That's pure sugar. My blood pressure was fine, and I was not dehydrated. Like, so of those things could have been something else, maybe, but I can't test that at home. But again, the sugar helped it. So sugar, we're going with sugar. So the hill workout, so much better. I did all of the things to prep for it. And so I took a salt pill. I took a salt pill last night. I took one this morning. I drank 24 ounces of water more than I usually do when I first get up. I had an English muffin with butter and jam plus applesauce for breakfast. I ate slowly. I drank slowly. I got up around six with my coffee. I wasn't out the door for my workout until 8:45. I did do it outside. I drank half a Coke right before I went out and I brought one and a half servings of Nerd's Gummy Clusters. And I added a five-minute rest and fuel break after at the halfway point of my hill. So after five rounds. My sugar didn't plummet. I didn't feel sick like I did last time. Now, like I said, I changed multiple variables. So I don't know exactly which one it was. Was it the waking up late? Was it the extra water and salt pill and more the water and combination of coke? Because remember, we talked about osmolality a couple of weeks ago. What was it that? I don't know. But honestly, I don't care because I did not want to feel that way again. And if this is just how much I need to prep for a Hill workout, so be it. So be it. I all of these things are totally manageable, easy for me to do, simple for me to do. I just need to remember to do them, but I can make reminders. And avoiding feeling like that again is totally worth it to do all of this extra prep because that was awful. You know, Levi didn't get up super early. He was actually exhausted from being at work the whole day before. I didn't start my workout super early. Like so many different things changed, but I don't, I, it does not matter. I did not want to feel like that. During my strength workout, I had 45 minutes or so again, because I procrastinated the Hills workout so much. I was so nervous. I was so nervous for this Hill workout. I was so nervous I was going to feel like that again. And I kept actually thinking like, am I nervous or do I have to pee? Like, you know, when you get that feeling in your stomach, well, I did have to pee, but I also was nervous. But anyway, it procrastinated. I sent out a bunch of emails. I posted on Instagram. I procrastinated the heck out of that workout. That's okay. It's fine. It's fine. I got it done. So I got it done. Great. Then I did my strength workout. I had 45 minutes, like I said, and I didn't do it circuit style today because I already knew what exercises I could get done in the 45 minutes because I did that on Monday. So typically I recommend doing circuit style if you have a time constraint for your workouts or you're new to working out, where you don't know how your body's going to react to the different exercises, how long it's going to take you to do a workout, things like that. I recommend circuit style. So then you do one set of each exercise, you do them all in a row until you've done them all. And then you get to start a second set. Because what happens if you only have 45 minutes and three sets of 10 repetitions, you do three sets of 10 repetitions for all of your exercises. What if you have a list of 10 exercises and you only get through four? Because that's how many you can get through at three sets of 10 in 45 minutes. Right? So if you do it that way, and we always start at the top of the list, right? If you always do it that way, you're always just repeating the exact same exercises. But when you do it circuit style and you get through all of the exercises first before any of them get a second round, then you've at least kept it well balanced, well rounded. So I recommend that. But this time I didn't need to do it because I knew how long each exercise was going to take me. So I was able to do it. I did do lateral lunges and the curtsy lunges first because they weren't on my machine and I didn't want to forget them. And also I didn't want to do them, so I didn't want to avoid doing them, right? Anyway, I did them. Lateral lunges went great. They were fine. Curtzy lunges, not so good. Curtsy lunges, if you don't know, it's you stand, and I'm gonna say, I'm gonna do my right curtsy lunge, and I'm gonna explain what that looks like. You step back with your left foot diagonally behind you, like you're curtsying, and that's how you do the exercise. And then that leg, that left leg comes back up, and then you do the same thing again. Or you could alternate right, left, right, left. Alternating is dynamic. Actually, the way I just described the curtsy lunge is also dynamic. And I didn't change that, and I should have. So next time I go to do them, maybe that will be part of the change. Anyway, curtsy lunges did not go well. And so when my right leg was in front, so doing right curtsy lunges, my left knee, specifically the outside or lateral edge of my patella of my kneecap, hurt. After about five reps, it was a sharp pain. And like I was recording it. So I think I even winced like on camera. I would have to go back and look at it. I tried it again and it did it again. So I tried a smaller range of motion and I was able to do it pain-free. And then I did slightly more range of motion until I was just edging into slightly hitting that pain, but I didn't push through it. So for the next set, when I switched, I ended up just deciding, you know what? I can't do this full range of motion without this pain, with no weight, because I was not holding any weight without weight. So I'm going to switch the exercise. I'm, I'm just gonna do a reverse lunge. And that was better. I was trying to see is this a dynamic component of it? Cause I was going back and forth from side to side, or was it the curtsy aspect? So reverse lunges straight back still had some of the pain to a lesser extent, but same location after about five reps. And I actually felt even I actually felt pain later just squatting down to sit onto the ground. So can I not squat or lunge? Is that what that means? No. This may be a one-time thing, but I started to delineate and determine: was it the motion? Was it how bent my knee was? Was it weighted and loaded? Like, was it the way I was weighted or loaded for it? So I took my massage gun off, used it on my quad, on the straight knee, all over. Then I did bent knee. I had no problem, no pain, no muscle knots. So then I stood up, I stretched my quad. That was a little tight. I could feel the area, but it wasn't painful. So it's not a passive stretch kind of muscle problem, but there is likely some inflammation in there, which I'm not surprised at. So because I could feel the area, but it wasn't painful, that means that it's not the muscle, but the area, something's going on because I could still feel it, right? Not pain, but like I could feel the area. So it was loaded use of that muscle, worse when the knee was loaded and bent. Because I could do a full set of knee extensions, like leg extensions on the machine, no pain. And so that's still using the quad, but it's not an eccentric control, meaning it's not loaded and bent at the same time. It's it's a concentric activity, meaning I'm using the muscle to straighten out and do the action of the muscle, right? And I'm not expecting any or all of you to understand this, but this is where my mind goes when somebody has a pain, an injury, something like that, to figure out what is it and how can we still do exercise and not aggravate it. And so I could still do the leg extension, the knee extension machine. I I couldn't even feel the spot, like no pain whatsoever. And that was at eight repetitions. So that was fine. But on the next set at four, I started feeling it, not painful, but I started feeling it. So I could feel it if I went heavier or if I did too many more. It like I I felt like that would have hurt more. So I just stopped at four. Loading the muscle hurts, specifically loading it when stretched or in a bent position hurt. So that means moving forward. I need to be cautious with exercises where I'm loading through that muscle and it's bending. So squats, lunges, curtsy lunges, uh, step, step down exercises, stuff like that. And of course, I'll still be cautious on the concentric exercises where I'm straightening out the leg and working it, but that is less worrisome. And worry isn't even the right word, but the thing I'm not gonna be thinking about as much. So I still need to be mindful, not adding any more weight. And I need to be mindful of my range of motion that I'm doing so I can stay pain-free. And so that likely means a smaller range of motion for 14 days. So why 14 days? I've talked about this in other episodes before. 14 days is the amount of time it takes your body to naturally take care of a minor injury, a minor muscle tear. Your body, it can turn over new cells and replicate them and load them in 14 days. That is physiologically how long it takes. So 14 days. I still want to load the quad. So I still need to continue exercises in a way to strengthen my quad without pain. Because if I don't load my quad, will it feel better? Yes. Because it was rested and I didn't poke the bear. It will make it feel better. But if I rest completely from that motion for two weeks and then say, oh my God, this feels great. I'm healed. And I go back to curtsy lunges, I'm going to have the pain and it's going to be worse and it's going to last longer than however long it lasts now. And at the time of this recording, it's been a while. I don't even think my knee bothered me the next day. But my body will start healing that quad and putting scar tissue down because that's the natural part of the healing process. But because I don't, if I don't load it, that scar tissue glues itself down and it does not turn into mobile contractile tissue. It stays as a fibrous, tough tissue. And so then it would be like trying to bend through glue and it rips off the glue and it rips the muscle tendon that that glue is adhered to. So instead, I'm going to gently load it. The glue is still there, but if I gently load it, the scar tissue actually starts changing fibers. And then as I load it more and more and feeling better, it doesn't rip off the glue because the fibers have started realigning themselves. If you have questions about that, especially if you're in stronger, faster finisher, I can talk about that on a call. Kind of need to see, I have a way of showing like how it goes down. Like scar tissue goes down very haphazardly, like in a cross-sectional pattern. And then as you gently load it, it actually straightens out the muscle fibers. So if you imagine one hand is perpendicular to the other hand with your fingers all splayed apart, and then slowly turn one of your hands so that now they're parallel with each other. That's what happens. Star tissue when it's gently loaded, it starts aligning those fibers into a straight line together. So it's not like a, it's not like a woven basket. It's like lining up pieces of rope next to each other. That might be the best way to put it. Anyway, those exercises didn't go great that day. And um that's fine. That was the last leg strength day for the week. I took a hot Epsom salt bath that day and everything turned out to be fine. Then the next day was my paced long run. So earlier in the week, I had thought to myself, okay, I'm gonna do my paced long run in 10 days, next Friday. And that was the plan. However, when I looked at the weather, the paste, the Friday that was supposed to be a paced long run was going to be 103 degrees at the hottest part of the day, which the hottest part of the day is like three or four o'clock, and I was not going to be running that day. But if that's the hottest part of the day, the beginning of the day is also hotter. So I knew that the Friday that I'm talking about now, May 29th, was going to be the hottest part of the day was gonna be like 80 degrees. So that meant a 23 degree difference from the next week. So I decided, you know what? I'm gonna do my paced long run this week in 60 degree weather instead of 80 degree weather. Could I have done it in the hotter weather? Sure. Would it have been the end of the world? No. But I have options, so why not? Instead of doing it for 6.2 miles, that's why it was going to be that day because it was going to be a 10K. I just decided to do it on a shorter distance, so five and a half miles. Well, this run sucked. It was so hard. It was so hard to keep those race paces. The easy pace felt great. And I think I overshot race pace by a lot. And I'm saying this, I wrote this before I ever looked at my watch. I think I overshot the race pace by a lot. I haven't looked at my final paces yet, but I think I was going too fast. And that's probably why it felt like this was why it why it felt like this, right? One thing that I may find for race pace and races that I need to do is I may have to change my running intervals. So I wrote all of this before I looked at my watch. Well, I looked at my watch and I didn't hit race pace once. So I was running fast, fast, fast, thinking I was hitting race pace. It was so hard and I didn't hit it once. I was inching close to it, but I didn't hit it. And that is unfortunate. So I I had a really hard time with this, and on the Day that this happened, I thought a big part of it was because my intervals were too long. It was really hard to keep my race pace for three minutes at a time. I seemingly did it okay on the tempo run. And so I started thinking, okay, well, maybe I will make my intervals shorter, where I run two minutes, walk one minute, instead of run three minutes, walk one minute. I don't know. I'm gonna have to play around with it. And you may find that for longer distances or different race goals, you may have to change around your intervals too. We're just gonna see how it goes. But now that I'm recording this after the fact, I think I blacked out and forgot that I did the tempo run earlier in the week and I did a hill workout the day before this paced long run. That's a lot of stress on my body. Like I talk all the time about not doing long runs fast because you need to give yourself a break, so to speak, right? But I am practicing race pace on this long run because I'm in a build phase. It's not new miles, but looking at the lineup of my speed workouts, and this is technically a speed workout for longer amount of time. I mean, this run should have taken me about 80 minutes. So an hour, 20 minutes. I don't remember, and I'm not gonna look at my watch right now on if how long it actually took me. But looking at this, no wonder this run did not feel good. I was probably still feeling pretty tired from the hill workout, and I may still have been feeling tired from the tempo run earlier in the week. So remember, like the Hill workout and the tempo run felt really good. And this one felt awful. So the rule of threes of thirds or whatever, like I was due for one to not feel good. It's just unfortunate that it was this one. But I also didn't, I was more concerned with the temperature. And so I wasn't really paying attention to all that the rest of the week encompassed. Right. And then my knee didn't hurt. But what if there was still some lingering hesitation, for lack of a better term, from the strength workout yesterday or the day before, right? Like there are so many different factors. I fueled well the night before. I had a a good carb dinner, I had a good carb breakfast. And like it, it, it seemed like I was ready and prepared. And after the fact, I'm looking at this and all of those speed workouts together. That's that's really hard. And tempo runs, race-paced tempo runs are really hard, but tempo runs are hard and hill workouts are hard. That's a lot of stress on my body. And it just decided like this is not gonna go well. This is one of the reasons why I recommend taking it so easy during your taper leading up to your race. So you don't accidentally overdo it because you don't want to have what happened to me on this paced long run happen on race day. That's why I don't recommend doing long runs during race week. And I recommend that once you hit peak mileage, that peak long run, that longest long run, that you don't do any more speed workouts leading up to your race. Because one bad day, one, not even bad, it could be a great day, but it's really stressful on your body. That could take you 10 to 14 days to recover from. Now, I'm not gonna know how long this run is going to take me to recover from. Cause at the time of recording this, I actually haven't worked out at all this week in week five. And that's a whole other episode. I literally will tell you about it next week. But so I won't have a good gauge on how long it will actually take me to feel good again because this is not uh an accurate week to do that description or do that, figure that out rather, right? And so this just was not a good pace long run. So please remember it's not always just the one run that you're in. You have to look at it like from all angles, from a bird's eye view. You need to look at the the week or the months as a whole. You can't just look at the one workout. You have to look at multiple things and factors. And then after that long run, I stretched at the park because I had dri driven to my old neighborhood so that I didn't have to figure out my path. I I know those, I know where I need to run to get to be five and a half, six miles or whatever in my old neighborhood. And it's only five minutes away. So I just drove over there, I stretched in the park, and then I got home and I did an upper body strength routine on my machine. I did medium weights, and actually my left thumb was really hurting with some of the dumbbells, and it was hurting so much I could not hold the 15-pound dumbbell, which would be a heavy workout for my biceps curls. So I dropped down to 10. That was still problematic. So I actually ended up doing just one repetition because um, excuse me, one set because the pain just lingered after I stopped. So I had had thumb surgery actually, um uh 16 years ago, this month, June 1st, 2010, I had thumb surgery. And based on that injury, I know I will likely develop arthritis. Maybe I I likely already have actually. And in some of the surrounding joints, normally it's fine, but sometimes holding dumbbells or holding the machine handles just puts pressure on it. And it it could be, I think it's because of how I wrap my hands around the things that I'm holding because my hands are small, handles and grips are just a bit too big for me. And then when I'm trying to exert force through it and pull it, it doesn't quite work. And then I don't have as much mobility in this thumb anymore. Now, from an outsider's perspective, I do, but I I don't. So like it doesn't move the same way my other thumb does, which is a good thing. Like, I'm not, it's not supposed to have as much mobility as the other thumb did. I I dislocated and broke that thumb um when I was playing soccer in um oh 2009. And you might be thinking, Allie, dummy, you don't use your hands in soccer. Well, I was a goalie. And so I went out for a dive. It was a particularly muddy day, and I went out for a dive. My thumb stuck in the mud, and the other player kicked the ball, which moved my hand, and my thumb stayed in the ground. So um, that was not fun. Part of it was fun because it was while I was in physical therapy school, and I actually diagnosed myself before I went to the doctor, and I was right. So give myself a little pat on the back for that one. That was that was a really cool uh thing to happen to me because it it kind of solidified like, yes, you understand what's going on in the body and you can take information and you can diagnose somebody with that information, right? Like that was something before I ever finished physical therapy school. It just like reinforced, like, okay, yeah, you you know what you're doing. And not everybody gets that reinforcement while they're going through school. So that was fun for me. But the the rehab aspect and stuff of it was not. And I ultimately, that happened in November, and I ultimately or or it was right around Halloween. And so ultimately I needed surgery on it because rehab what it was not rehabbing. And turns out it's because part of the capsule that goes around the bones, it was flipped and stuck between my two bones. And you may have heard me say this story before, but the thing that hurt the most after the initial injury was just walking. And my doctors used to be like, What are you talking about walking? Are you walking on your hands? Like, what's going on? Why does walking hurt? And I was like, I have to put my hand in my pocket in order for it to not hurt when I walk. And this is one thing that has helped me work with patients in the physical therapy clinic and runners who have any kind of symptom from running. It has helped me just listen to the symptoms and always believe them because they they know their body best. And this just reinforced it. Like it doesn't make sense that walking was the most painful thing after the initial injury. But once they went in for surgery and they found that this thing was wedged between my bones, it made perfect sense. Every step I took, there was a jostle. And so it put a little bit of pressure. Those bones came a little bit closer together and then they came off. And then they came a little closer together. But when I stabilized it, it didn't hurt because I didn't have that bouncing in my thumb. And so it just made perfect sense. And it it is, it has actually helped me with the way I work with people through the years. And so that was really weird. So I had surgery to fix it, and it's it's been great. It it acts up every once in a while, and it's usually with these types of things where I have to hold something and it my thumb just wasn't having it. So that's how that strength workout went. But I did what I could and and finished up. And then Saturday was a rest day, Sunday was a cross-training day. I actually don't have any notes about this. Um, I don't think I really wanted to do this workout. I think I fit it in later in the day because we ended up having a problem with our shower. And we were going to be having work done on our shower all week. And so it kind of got to the point on Sunday where I was like, I don't really want to do it, but I don't think I'm going to be able to work out or work out the way I normally do at all this week. So let me get this last workout in and just go from there. And so I did. I'm I'm always glad when I finish a workout. So it was one of those days where I was like, I don't want to do it, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it all week. So I might as well do it now. And so I did, and it it worked out just fine. I just walked on the treadmill on an incline. And like I said, I don't have any notes on this. I don't remember why I don't have any notes on it. I probably just got lazy and didn't take notes on how it went, but I think I just watched a TV show. Um, actually, yeah, now I remember. I watched Sabrina the Teenage Witch. That's the only time I would have watched it. And I I put that on Disney Plus and um yeah, just got a little little workout in, got a little walk in and call it a day. So overall, I'd say, you know, my cross-training walk, neutral, not good, not bad, paced long run really hard. The two speed workouts, really great. Hard, but great. So two great, one not great, one neutral. That's a pretty solid workout uh week. I got four workouts in when having to rearrange life getting lifey. And I took the priority of should I cross-train or should I do a speed workout? And because my goal is getting faster, speed workout it was. And so I made my normal speed workout day a rest day and then made my normal cross-training day a speed day. And I just manipulated it. But I do want you to remember that if a workout isn't good, we do have to look at your fueling. We do have to look at temperature, we do have to look at hydration, but we also need to look at what the rest of the week has looked like, either exercise wise or stress wise, because that is going to put more stress on your body and could be the reason that something isn't feeling good. So remember, it's not always just the workout itself, but it's everything else in your life surrounding that workout that can make it good or bad.