A Calibration Run

A 3 day weekend should have a 3 days of hard workouts. But be fun! Friday I drove Chris and myself up to Yosemite for a XC ski adventure during a light snow storm to Dewey Point. Saturday was a 42 mile, 2400 ft ride through the local mountains. And today was long-run day. My goal was to do the Nicene Marks Half Marathon course, backwards. I was worried about my left psoas tendinitis issue, as it had flared a bit last week. But it had given me no trouble on the XC skiing, despite being called on with my heavy skis and heavier backcountry leather 3-pin boots in untracked snow. I ran the side trails to the West Ridge trail, up to the ridge, and felt OK. Light rain started up on the ridge (not below) but was never a big deal. By the time I got to the connector to Hoffman's, my psoas was getting a bit sore. I'd stop every few minutes and stretch it, and continue. Arrived at Hoffman's, went right, on down the trail and slowly the pain increased, despite the occasional stretch. Arriving down at Aptos Creek, I needed to walk the last 3 miles back to the entrance. I put it to good use by using the known distance (3.0 miles) to see what pace I could walk when injured this way. I averaged 16.3 minute miles, and 15.4 min on the final mile (if the sign 0.8 miles to pay station is right). For a marathon, 16.3 min miles works out to 7.17 hours, which would make hitting the Ironman St. George cutoffs tough unless I've got a cushion coming off the bike. That's worst case, assuming I have to walk the entire St. George Ironman run course (well, except that St. George has no level stretches at all, like the Aptos Creek 3 miles). For today, including the walk, I did 3:07 for the 14 miles (I did the side trails in, so figuring that's 14 miles total). That's a 2:56 half marathon pace, or 5:52 marathon.

This psoas issue has GOT to be solved! I felt I still had running left in me, w/o this inflamed tendon. Likely the two prior days of XC skiing and biking stressed and shortened my psoas and set me up for this. I've got to pay a lot of attention to regular determined stretching during this final month. At least my other imbalance issues (IT band, knee, achilles, calf cramping) didn't appear.