97- delayed soreness and double run recovery day

Good news:  I'm not at all sore from my 16 miler yesterday, which was my longest *single* run since the marathon. 
Bad news: my shoulders + back + arms are soooo sore from skiing two days ago.  Seriously, even the motion of running hurt them!  I find as I get older, two days after I do anything different/strenuous (ie first ski of the year!) I am sore.  This was certainly the case today!

But alas, there were miles to be run.  It looks like most of my Mondays are structured pretty similarly this training cycle.  Since I am doing my long runs on Sunday, Monday's are 'recovery' days.  Which looks mostly like 6/6 splits.  The rationale is that milage stays up by still getting 12 miles in for a recovery day, but it is less taxing on the body by splitting it with time to recover/rest/eat/drink in between.

I met up with my friend for run #1.  She was up north for one more day and I'm really glad we got to run together.  Ironically, we live in the same town downstate (and I've known her my whole life) because she is going to med school and I still live in the town I went to school in, but we never run together.  Although we have kept in touch via coffee and such over the years, she just never showed interest in running with me and always insisted I was too fast (not true) or that she would slow me down too much (also not true.)  I'm so glad we've gotten a few runs together over the last few weeks and I'm hoping it can continue.  This morning's run went by so fast with us chatting about our families/summer/running.  I'm doing pretty good at keeping the pace relaxed on these recoveries, today was 8:11 average, with all the miles fairly even.  More important, I just enjoyed being with my friend!

The afternoon was spent in a normal, up north rainy day kind of way-swimming, reading, napping, and playing around online.  My family went out wine tasting (so NOT my thing) and once they left and I procrastinated sommore, I headed out for run #2.  Although I felt stiff and sore at first the run was great.  I had alot of stuff on my mind and it felt good just to GO.  I did a normal boring route up and back a bunch of times on a flat-ish road.  Once I hit 4 miles at just over 8 minute pace I decided just to let my legs do their thing.  I knew the last 2 miles would be up hill and so I challenged myself to hit it hard.  7:10 and 6:52 were my last two miles splits.  :)  I was happy with this and it pushed my run to a 7:47 average.  Maybe not so 'recovery' but sometimes you just gotta go with the flow!

Now, I'm watching 'Silence of the Lambs' on TV and waiting for my family to come home so we can watch 'Food INC'.  Frozen yogurt from the local place for dinner- perfection.  Time to bounce! :)