In need of a boost

Tuesday, January 22nd

7:00 PM - Track Workout @ Reggie
21 min warm up
4 x 800 w/ 2.5 mr - 2:16.3, 2:16.6, 2:15.1, 2:14.8; 4 mr
3 x 300 w/ 1.5 mr - 45.2, 46.0, 46.2
22 min cool down
Total = 10 Miles

Not a very hard workout but still solid for two days after a race. I worked out with Roland and the track was packed as usual, forcing us to weave in and out of traffic on every interval. My legs were a little heavy on the first couple 800s but seemed to loosen up more as the workout progressed. We were hitting the 300s pretty quick and it felt fine. Until the 3rd one when I felt a twinge in my right hamstring. It may have just been from doing some faster stuff, or from the race on Sunday, or possibly connected to the tendinitis that I have on that side. Either way, it didn't feel good! So I decided to skip the last 300 and call it a night. I ran the cool down outside which felt ok, but the hamstring was really tight. The fact that the sidewalks were glazed over with ice and I was slipping all over the place didn't help any. When I got home, I worked on it for a while trying to get the knots out, and then iced before going to bed. Getting in there with my hands was pretty painful but it seemed to help.

Wednesday, January 23rd

0 Miles

When I got up this morning, both the tendinitis and the hamstring were pretty sore and seemed to be generally unhappy with me. So as much as I hate to do it, I decided that I should just bite the bullet and take the day off. I'm getting pretty frustrated with things lately and am starting to lose patience. I feel like I am so far behind where I want to be right now and I just can't seem to catch up. I don't want to rush things but at the same time, I want to make more progress in my fitness. My body just isn't cooperating right now. I feel like I'm in a huge rut that I can't get out of. My mileage hasn't been very high and the workouts that I've been doing aren't that hard, so I don't really know what the problem is. I had some bad luck with that fall just before new years and I've had some added stress in the last few weeks (some from outside variables and some being self inflicted), but I should still be able to handle this kind of work load. In the next 4-5 weeks, I have some pretty big races on the schedule and I've set some pretty big goals for all of them. These are all very important to me and I'm just not sure if I'm ready to hit those goals yet. I feel like my confidence has been on a downward spiral since coming off a great cross season and I just can't seem to get things back to the way they were. I want to get back to feeling strong everyday and feeling confident in myself again. I find myself in desperate need of a confidence boost and just don't know where to look for it.

Enough ranting for today. Hopefully tomorrow's post will be more optimistic.