Shorter Run Than Planned

Yesterday was a travel day for our vacation, so I didn't do much except sit in the car.

This morning I had an 8-mi goal-pace run planned.  It was to be my first outside run of more than 7 miles.   It was also my first run with my new insoles and shoes.

Well, it didn't quite go as planned.  First, I started off too fast, despite adjusting Pace DJ downward.  So I kept stopping every half miles to adjust it.  It turns out that you need to change the BPM a lot to get a relatively small pace change.  I think that 125 BPM will be about 6.0 mph - I had started at about 147 BPM!

My adjustments on Pace DJ kept going through about 6 miles.  By then, my IT band and calf were starting to hurt.  I stopped for a break at 7 miles, and when I started to run again, my leg was very unhappy.  I decided it would be better not to push it and walked the rest of the way back.  So I did 7.13 miles in 1:10:46.  I did end up averaging right around my goal pace.

In good news, I did not have any problems with the new insoles and shoes.  Sadly, they did not magically fix my IT band.

This afternoon my husband and I planned to play tennis (against each other).  I was a bit wary of this, since my IT band did hurt so much after the run.  I had less than 5 hours between the run and tennis.  I put my new insoles in my tennis shoes and wore my knee brace.  I took the tennis a bit easy in the warm-up and first games to make sure my leg was warmed up, but it didn't end up bothering me much at all.  And afterward, no serious pain or limping.  I really can't figure out what the problem is.  Originally I thought it was lateral movement from tennis since it developed while playing tennis, but now it seems like maybe its overuse from running.  I don't know!  Overall I think it is very slowly improving, so hopefully that will keep up.

I was also happy during the tennis that I managed to keep my energy level up until really the last 15 minutes or so of the two hours that we played - even though I'd ran 7 miles that morning!  Good to see my stamina is still good.