Cumulative Fatigue

Or something.

I’m starting to think that just pushing on with my training plan straight after the HM last week wasn’t such a good idea.

Just because I don’t feel like my legs are tired doesn’t mean they actually aren’t.

Which is why I’m sitting in bed on a Saturday evening with ice packs wrapped around my ankles.

It all started… with the little wobble in my knees after the HM, which I completely ignored as the knees weren’t really painful.

(This might have been a mistake.)

I “recovered” from my HM with a long walk the next day followed by a til dawn party. I was back running on Tuesday,  in the gym for the first time in a year on Wednesday and running again on Thursday.

The knees felt pretty sore during Thursday’s run (I’m sure the 2 hours of weights the day before had some influence there as well) but I pushed through since it was a short run.

When I woke up today, I did not want to run. Despite enough sleep I felt exhausted.

I’m thinking it must have been a combo of pushing myself continuously physically and the fact that when I do take a rest day, I’m out drinking cocktails

Exhibit A

in 11cm heels.

(Told you, I’m not very practical when it comes to shoes. :p)

So all that together, all I wanted from today was to stay at home, read and eat a ton of strawberries.

I didn’t.

Because strawberries and guilt don’t make for a tasty snack.

I told myself to ignore the fatigue, the off knees and just get out there. Even if for only a few kilometres. So I did a six km lap near my house and as I passed my building I decided to keep on going.

By the 9th km, the blisters were back to poppin’ despite the liberal amounts of vaseline. At that point I was ready to call it a day.

Only. At that exact moment, one of my Endomondo buddies decided to test the pep talk feature.

Suddenly, in my ears: “Keep up the great work, K…!”

Just what the doctor ordered. 😀

I turned into the forest and kept going, pushing through the knee pain. 15km in my left ankle fell inwards (best description I can think of) and every step became painful.

And I still tried to run through it.

I guess I have this weird idea that if I want it bad enough, I can make it happen. (And make pain disappear…)

For nearly a kilometre I ran with tears in my eyes. At the 16k mark I gave in. 😦 It got too painful.

The joke here is that since I was running my long run route… I still got to hobble-walk 5km home. 😛 Oops. That brings my total distance covered today again to 21km.

It’s hours since my run, but both knees and ankles are still sore to the touch. Let’s see what tomorrow brings, more running or a little bit of a break.

K.