12/21 - Kenyan Way Hills - 9 miles

I had a decent workout, but my left hamstring was still bothering me. I need to be careful and make sure I don't do something that would really injure it. A little over a year ago my dad was having some nagging hamstring pain and ended up hurting his hamstring pretty bad and missed quite a bit of training. I went to the evening workout directly after work and got there right before the group was starting the workout. I had only gotten about 1/2 a mile warmup in, but I saw Sam and he was running the first loop pretty easy as a warmup so I did another mile warmup with him on the hills. He was running a little easier on the hills since he had run 24 miles on Saturday. The first harder lap I stopped after each hill to stretch for 10 seconds or so and let Sam and another new guy catch back up and then I'd start the next hill with them. After the first lap I went ahead on my own and did a total of 5 hard laps (20 hills).

I was still having issues with the ligaments on the back of my knees feeling funny as I pushed off hard for part of the run, but I discovered the last couple of laps that if I really concentrated on keeping good form it didn't bother me. When I get tired and my form starts to fall apart my legs tend to kick out to the side and flop all over the place instead of moving forwards and backwards in a straight line. When I concentrated and kept good form I could run hard up the hills without the strange feeling on the back of my knee. I think what is probably happening is my form gets bad and then I end up using different muscles than I should normally be using and they can't hold up to the strain. I talked to Sean a little bit after the workout and he said it sounds like I have chronic hamstring problems and need to to more work to strengthen them. I did some lunges and squats after the workout and then ran a 3 mile easy cooldown with Sam. It was good chatting with him and talking about our goals for the marathon next month. After I headed home, I spent about 30 minutes doing lots of stretching and foam rolling and my leg seemed to feel pretty good after that.

I'm going to be pretty careful with my running the rest of this week and ride the bike/crosstrain on some of my recovery days if I don't feel like my hamstring is improving. I'm planning on trying to run mile repeats Wednesday and then run a 24 mile run the following Tuesday or Wednesday as my last really long run before the marathon. The long run is the key workout I really want to get in and be able to run well so I will scrap some of the interval work if needed to make sure I am healthy enough to get that workout in.