Back in the swing of things

I've been back to running for almost a week and am finally feeling like things are clicking again. Today was the first day that my legs weren't sore/achy/tired and I felt smooth and relaxed the entire run. If everything goes as planned the next 3 days, I should be over 75 miles for the week. I haven't made it out to any of the morning workouts in the past week because I've still been battling a little bit of a head cold and have just really needed the extra sleep, especially with the extra mileage.

This morning I went in to see my doctor because I was still having issues with my ears stopping up and I'd finished my antbiotics and hadn't really seemed to improved much. He looked in my ears for about 5 seconds and said that I never had an ear infection and I had been misdiagnosed. He said it was extremely rare for adults to ever get ear infections, but he did say that I had inner ear trauma and the eustachian tube on my left side was plugged which was what was causing all the pressure to build up. He told me to take sudafed and use afrin nasal spray and tilt my head and that should clear up the blockage.

Today I ran 11 miles total with an 8 mile tempo run at 5:58 pace. It was a little slower than some of my previous tempo runs, but it was 72 degrees out and I'm still easing back into it a little this week with the high mileage I'm doing. It was a good workout other than some major inner thigh chafing. I'll need to break out the vaseline for the rest of my runs this week.

Yesterday I ran an easy 7 miles at 7:10 pace. Monday I did a fartlek workout with 5 x 800 @ 2:55 - 3:00 and 1/4 mile recovery at 7:10 - 7:15 pace for a medium-hard workout. Sunday I ran 9.5 miles in 68 minutes so I'm at 36 miles so far this week. The first couple of days back to running, my hips and glutes felt really sore and I just felt really tight all over, but everything seems to have loosened up and feels good. My achilles seems to be kind of stiff first thing in the morning, but it felt fine by midday and didn't bother me at all during the run and my hamstrings have felt great the past couple months which never seemed to happen in my past marathon training. The last couple of years I would run with a tube of Ben Gay to put on my legs during the long runs when they started hurting so I could make it through the runs.

I'd dying to get out and run a race soon. I haven't raced since the 1/2 marathon in October (if you even call that racing) and I tend to burn out with lots and lots of training with no racing. I was really struggling with motivation before I got sick so it was easy to take a little time off, but I think it helped me refocus and I'm really motivated to get the most out of this week and the next two before I really taper for the marathon.