To follow up from my weekend, on Sunday I ran for an hour, but not very fast. I had a bunch of leftover sushi from Saturday (I purposely ordered extra), and had a bunch more for lunch, watched some football, but seemed to be in a perpetual state of hunger the entire day. I have no idea how many calories I burned on Saturday, but as far as I could tell, I was stuffing my face and still felt constantly hungry.
On Monday, I woke up with non-functioning legs! I could barely walk, as my calves did not really want to work, and my quads now hurt like motherfuckers. Going downstairs (I live in a split level), I had to hold the rail and take one step at a time sideways. I decided I better not try and run on ground, so after I swam (where it hurt a bit to push off the wall), I did a water running workout, and even that was tough on my calves, but it felt just fine aerobically. Since my legs were trashed, I figured I'd get most of my upper body lifting done, and there were no problems there.
The remainder of the day, I sort of hobbled around wearing compression socks, and slept fitfully, since any contact with my legs was a bit painful. But I knew I'd get over it. On Tuesday, I headed to the pool again in the morning for another water run, which felt better than on Monday, did some more lifting, then got on my bike in the afternoon. I knew I wouldn't be able to work too hard on the bike yet, so I opted to just spin in the small chainring. This makes me more nuts than blasting out lots of watts, so I quit after 50 minutes, I was SO BORED! But my calves seemed to be coming around, and also my quads.
Sometime during the middle of last night, I noticed that when I got up to pee I could almost walk normally! Plus, I ditched the compression socks because too much of that is not good for the muscles, either, based on my experience. When I finally got up this morning, I walked downstairs in a normal fashion without holding on to the rail! I was so happy, that I decided to do part land running and part water.
I got to the Y, and got on the treadmill. The new treadmills they just got have the ability to switch the display to a number of different languages, so today I chose French (Sunday was some sort of Arabic--I'm not sure which country exactly!). I began warming up easy, and my legs felt GREAT! There was still some residual soreness in my calves, but nothing like on Sunday, and I was smiling from ear to ear! I only spent 15 minutes on the treadmill, and when I hit the STOP button and the stats screen came up in French, I noticed that the button which reads EXIT in English now said QUITTER. AWESOME!!! I laughed my ass off at that.
Next I headed to the track, and I ran 3 1/3 mile repeats, not at top speed, but I just wanted to see what I had. I did pretty well considering, then I ran another 1/4 mile easy, but it was still a good pace. I followed that up with a hard 2400 swim and then I did some water running for :32.
I am really pleased at how I chose to recover from the unplanned assault on the stairs, and am pretty confident I will be completely back to normal tomorrow, including hitting the bike hard. I still need to do a bit more running today, and will do it on my at home treadmill, and some easy biking.
But now I am REALLY looking forward to being able to do lots and lots of squats tomorrow! Also I have a little indoor sprint triathlon on Sunday, so I'm thinking I should be in decent shape for it.
I love this stuff!
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