Uncle and a Reframe

I cried 'uncle' today. Not because the roller workout was too hard. My efforts were better than I expected them to be. 'Uncle' because I have reconfirmed that I am not a multi-day quality workout runner. My past running history has shown that I am more successful when I run only one quality workout per week and at the most some kind of short tempo/MGP run on another day. Both of my marathon PRs have been at the end of training seasons with one quality a week, regardless of overall weekly miles. Every single time that I have been in a group that does Tuesday/Thursday quality workouts I get an injury...and I can count at least 3 seasons where that has occurred. Again, that is regardless of overall weekly miles.

I'm not injured in case you are wondering. My left hip/glute has flared up a little (no big surprise) and right now it is very early. I was still able to run 13.3 'rollers' this morning, but I opted to not run the steady state back to Randalls once I figured out that the fast hill work was bothering my hip.

Steve and I both agreed that it was a great decision to change up the T/TH/S plan and run only the Tuesday quality workouts hard, then run a MLR on Thursday and approach any kind of pace work on Saturday with caution. I get to still keep up all of the rest of my mileage assuming my body can handle it. He was great about the decision being made, and reconfirmed that we had talked about all of this at the beginning of the season. Before I even started the high miles, we knew that at some point my body may not want to run two quality days. I'm glad that he thinks we're making a good decision.

Some people's bodies thrive on 2-3 hard workouts a week. Some people need no quality at all. Some people need fewer miles. Some people need more miles. I'm just thankful that I have a coach that understands that everyone has different needs and that I might actually perform better with a plan that is slightly different than the majority of the group.