It's Because I Pat Myself on the Back So Often

Yeah ... that's why my shoulder was killing me this weekend ... too much patting myself on the back. Seriously, I have no idea why, but Friday night and all through Saturday, it hurt so much to move my left arm to the side, or to move it behind my back. I was afraid it might have been a problem with my rotator cuff. However, I have been icing it quite a bit, and it has improved today, to the point where I'm not too worried anymore. Even still, I'll be sure not to pitch a ball game, go fly fishing, or play jai alai anytime soon.

Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning, I thought I should play it safe, and I passed up going to the 5-mile race in St. Andrew's today. I was really looking forward to it. Mike tells me it went very well, no rain to be found, and a good turn out. Oh well, there's always next year.

I tried doing my scheduled four mile recovery run on Saturday, but just a few strides let me know that my shoulder wouldn't let it happen. It just hurt too much to swing the arms at all. Instead, I spent some time on our stationary bike - 21 km's in 42 minutes, over various levels of resistance. I felt bad about missing the prescribed training, until I read this from the Pfitzinger book today (page 108): "Because the main rationale for recovery runs is simply to increase blood flow through the muscles, you can replace a 30-minute recovery run with about 45 minutes on the bike." I don't plan to make a habit of this, but it's nice to know that it was a reasonable trade-off.

This afternoon, I did a 15 mile long run. My shoulder felt good enough that I thought if I was careful I could manage. As it turned out, it really didn't bother me much at all - just a couple slight twinges. From what I've read, the increased flow of blood might have actually made it feel better.

So ... for my first week on my Pfitzinger plan ... I was close to the plan. The total planned mileage was 33 miles, and I totalled a little over 32 miles. I missed the four mile run on Saturday, but went 15 miles Sunday rather than the recommended 12. My run today felt great - good pace (for me), good heart rate for the length of the run, felt strong and kicked in a bit the last few miles. I felt I could have gone a few more miles without a problem, but I guess that's also a way to get hurt - you know, an excessive increase in mileage too quickly, rather than the build up over time. The coming week calls for just a bit more - 37 miles for the week. I'm looking forward to the bigger weeks, pushing over 50 miles for the week, and 20 miles for the long run. Bring it on!