Week six of training was kind of a disappointment. I started off the week with an unplanned rest day on Monday. I had five miles planned, but I felt like it was better to give my knee the day off. For the middle of the week I stuck to my schedule, even though there was yet more snow. We got another foot or so of the white stuff going into Thursday morning so my run was a bit of a mess. It was still coming down and the roads weren’t quite fully plowed yet, but I got my seven miles done. To help with traction, I took a retired pair of New Balance 1600s and installed a few screws to act as DIY snow spikes. I wish I had more screws to put in and that they were sheet metal screws with a hex head, but I had to work with what I had on hand. Being that the 1600 has a thin sole, I had to be very careful to make sure nothing was going to go too deep and stab me in the foot. While the DIY spikes didn’t fix all my traction issues, they helped enough for me to get the miles done.
Friday was supposed to be a rest day, but I decided to do four of the miles I skipped on Monday. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best of ideas, but I wanted to run.
My long run for the week was another 15-miler. Again, it was supposed to snow so I tired to get out there early enough to beat as much of it as I could. I got about halfway through my run before the snow started coming down. While this 15-miler was slightly slower than the week before’s, it was still a decent clip. Unfortunately, more knee pain was present.
I skipped out on Sunday’s run for a rest day and I think I’m going to take another couple days off to see if it helps my knee any.
All in all, last week was definitely my most disappointing week of training so far. I missed a total of five miles and my knee bothered me all week. I don’t want to keep being stuck in the injury cycle, but I also don’t want to miss a lot of training. I’m not sure how to handle this yet, but this week is a bit of a step-back so we’ll see how that goes. It’s also been suggested to me to get a deep tissue massage. That may be an option I look into later in the week.
