Today’s long workout was an exercise in moderating expectations.
I had hoped to try and do some treadmill running, which I hadn’t done since the hamstring issue began. However, I had woke up this morning with some hamstring soreness, and I suspected those plans weren’t going to go according to plan.
I started slow and planned to do a 10 minute warmup in increasing increments, but I got barely into the 2nd increment before I realized shutting it down was the best idea, and so I did before the vague soreness got any worse.
In fact, I got on the elliptical, thinking perhaps I’d knock out another 80-120 minutes, and for a change it actually began to feel sore about 15-20 minutes in. So I shut that down as well.
I decided to try an old friend, the spin bike, even though my last experience with that provided some pain and soreness. But I remember that was on the recumbent version and I had yet to try the regular spin bike.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover the spin bike felt fine. Incidentally, Garmin this weekend has a challenge badge for 40K (24mi) on the bike, so I gave the spin bike a good hour and 45 minutes. Maybe it wasn’t a long run, but this was certainly close enough for now.
I have some hope to do some Easy Intervals this week. If I can get them in, my Indy goal might still remain within reach going into September. We’ll see.
Over coffee this morning, I did some meal planning for this week. The challenge is I spend about 12-13 hours at work or to/at/from the gym training. I want to see if I can clean up portions of my diet and effectively fuel an increase in training volume.
So far I had been eating a light breakfast, and I think I’m going to start cramming more fruit and protein into that morning meal. I also swapped out nuts for more fruit, as I’m already taking in quite a bit of dietary fat and want to see if paring that a bit will help shed some extra weight. I also wanted dinner to be more consistent, as I’ve mostly been grabbing whatever’s most readily available and best a fit for what nutrients I need. If I can eat lean protein each evening, that will set me up nicely to sleep well that night.
I managed to get the needed grocery shopping for all this planning, and will look forward to seeing how this goes this next week.
This is the kind of stuff I can get done when I decide not to travel for a weekend.