I don't know what's going on with my body but I ain't complaining. I have never felt this good so soon after an ultra. I was really expecting to be in bits on Sunday given how sore I was immediately after the race and then sitting into the car for a 2hr drive home. But for whatever reason I woke up Sunday morning (after a glorious 10hr sleep) and hopped out of bed amazed to have no quad or hamstring pain. Like none. I did the touch-toe test no problem and then I tried the stair-test down to my basement - terribly scientific I know - and again no problem!Did an easy swim Sunday afternoon and a nice walk around Lake Harriet. Then Monday was like most other Mondays... yoga in the morning and swim in the evening. Worked really late so I slept in this morning (ah how I love calling 6:30am a sleep in...) and this evening had a fun bike ride with the gals out around Corcoran and Medina. We did close to 2hrs in some serious wind. It was great fun heading north - sailing along at 27mph and my heart rate at 133! But the journey back was a little tougher. Treated myself to a new HRM on Sunday - I'd been eyeing up the Sunto watches in REI for some time now so I figured after Saturday's effort I deserved it! Went the whole hog and bought the foot pod aswell. I suppose this means I'll have to step on a treadmill one last time this Spring in order to calibrate it...
Tomorrow morning I'll be up early for a run with Bronywn. I am thinking I'll be able for the 7-8 miles but better not get too cocky... I have a massage tomorrow evening and knowing Sue she will unearth more that a few troublesome areas. My shoulders did take a lot of the stress on Saturday and are a reminder of the long day out there. I have a bad habit of tensing them while running and I know all that awkward shuffling on the trail made it worse than usual. I'm not sure if it worked but I will recommend it anyway - IB-relief - it's a topical ibuprofen cream that I believe recently got approved in the US. It's kinda spendy and I generally don't advocate dosing up on meds but the fact that you don't actually ingest the stuff makes it seem almost harmless!
Still on the fence about Saturday. I know I will end up starting the 50k and mostly likely finishing it but I want to reserve the right to drop out if I start to feel any pain! I just recently added a return trip to the Promise Land 50k in Virginia the following weekend and I want have a good run down there. I need to go to DC for work the following week and as I was looking at flights out there it hit me that it was the weekend Kami and I had flown out there for the race last year. I checked the website and sure enough the race was Saturday and registration was still open. David Horton puts on an excellent series of races around Lynchburg and after an awesome experience at both this race the Mountain Masochist in November I am excited to be heading back down there. A lot of the same names have signed up again and I am looking forward to seeing a few people I ran with on one or other or both of the races last year. And I figure it will be good training for the Jemez Mountains 50M in mid-May. Yeah, that's the other one that just got added to the race list! I have been planning it for a while but have kept it to myself as it's a bit of a mad idea given the course profile - which I could pull up and post here but I am not quite ready to study it again. Hopefully the altitude in the Blue Ridge Mountains will produce a few red blood cells just in time for the trip to Los Alamos...
