My post race runs this week have all been labored, slow and short. But the legs have been incrementally feeling better. Didn't have any workouts this week, just decided to run easy and get the legs back.
This morning I forgot my keys
, which meant I had to stretch my run longer until everybody at home was already up and somebody could let me into the building. If I rang our buzzer earlier, I'd be waking everybody up early (angry wife in the morning was not my goal). Gave me the excuse to go longer, and the legs were feeling decent.
I settled into a very comfortable cruising pace tailing a guy who had cut in a couple miles into my run. Nice to have somebody pacing me- wish my race had had that. After he cut out, the legs and breathing all still felt comfortable so I kept going at a quasi-tempo run. At the mile mark (6) I eased up and did a last cool down mile home. Felt good to open up a bit.
I was shocked, given the relative effort, to see that I had run a lot faster than I thought. Did 2m and 5k strava PRs. I
think my legs work better on muscle memory and were remembering the race pace as a cruising pace. Makes me think I need to do more extended tempo runs where I've normally been doing intervals. Maybe also stretch out my uptempo segments on my long runs, where I'm usually pushing for 4m +/-.
And the stretching yada yada.