I can't hear you!

I was absolutely positive that Ben told me that last week was going to be an easy week.  Turns out that, once again, I only heard what I wanted to hear.  It wasn't the most difficult week of running in the history of the world (nope, that honour is going to belong to this week) but it was harder than I expected an easy week to be and I made sure that everyone knew about it.  Knowing that it wasn't intended to be easy, however, makes me feel more kindly towards legs that behaved like uncooperative planks of wood.

I escaped last week with just tired legs and a overly tight left calf (again).  I've had so many injuries over the years that I don't even have to resort to Dr Google anymore to diagnose myself.  I was convinced for a short time that this was the start of Compartment Syndrome but it's more likely that it was related to running parts of my threshold intervals up a hill (it was Shetland; it's unavoidable), wearing heels to work, sitting like a pretzel on the plane, and unconsciously trying to find an excuse not to do the ultra at the end of the month (self-sabotage is alive and well). 

So on Sunday, when I finally had a good look at this week's running schedule, today's threshold intervals of 6-8-10-8-6 minutes separated by three minutes of jogging resulted in my first thought being 'my calf is going to blow up if I do that.'  My second thought was 'that's the hardest threshold session I'll ever have done.'  And, of course, my third thought was 'it's too hard, I don't want to do it.'  Ben said that missing out a run to give my calf more of a rest wouldn't be a bad thing given that training has been going so well, and I immediately assumed that he meant that I didn't  have to do The Hardest Threshold Run Ever. 

Yet again, I only heard what I wanted to hear.  What Ben MEANT was IF my calf is tight and bad and I NEED some rest (as opposed to just fancying a rest), then either drop or cut short one of this weekend's long runs.  NO EXCUSES for not doing the threshold run.  In fact, he suggested that I approach this run with a spirit of excitement  and curiosity about how my body might react.  Huh.  I'd have been more spirited if my legs hadn't felt like I had concrete blocks tied to them.  But never mind.  I'm a wannabe ultra runner and I can toughly whinge my way through just about anything.

So I taped up my calf and shuffled out the door.  There was some intermittent tightness in the first couple of miles but nothing major and as my legs warmed up, my calf completely settled down.  I felt like I was running sooooo slowly but a later perusal of my Garmin stats showed threshold paces not that far off what I was managing during marathon training.  It was hard, but I did it.  And almost seven hours post-run, the calf is still pretty much okay. 

It looks like this ultra actually might happen.