I announced last week that I had registered for the Vermont City Marathon, held over Memorial Day weekend in Burlington.  This will be another two-month training cycle, which I’ve been liking a lot lately.  I took a full recovery week after the Asheville Marathon, and then I slowly started back up this week, without a focus on mileage.

Here was my plan:

• OTF X 3
• CorePower Yoga X 3
• Easter Weekend — no long run
• Lose some body fat
• Watch March Madness (go Hoos!)
• Do UVA Speed Clinic remedial exercises DAILY

It was a little ambitious, but I did tick off a few of these…

Monday

• 5 mile walk commute in my Vivobarefoot shoes
• Quick lift (deadlifts, kettlebell swings)
• CorePower Yoga Sculpt.  Getting out ALL THE KINKS.  This was a tough class.  Check out my review for more info.

Tuesday

• Four mile run + Orangetheory strength day.  I had not run at all since the Asheville Marathon, so this was my first chance to test the legs.  I did my easy four miles to get to class and felt OK — a little fatigued, but OK.  I thought I would work out of it as I warmed up.  But when class started and I tried to settle in to my “base” pace, the fatigue wasn’t getting any better.  The workout called for 2.5 minute “push” intervals uphill.  During those, my right lower leg started feeling really weird.  I couldn’t tell if it was a shin split or a tight calf muscle or what.  I tried to rotate my ankle a little bit and stretch out the calf but that didn’t help.  Of course I immediately got paranoid that it was a stress fracture or something terrible, so I scaled back to a power walk for the rest of the treadmill portion.  The “floor” portion was fine — normal lifting stuff. I ended up with only two “splat points” but I knew that there was no reason to push it.  I have a few theories about what might have been going on.  (1) That CorePower Sculpt class was tough and new to me, and it’s possible that some part of it used my calf muscles in a new way.  (2) I also think that my transition to the new Vivobarefoot zero drop shoes could be causing tightness or different muscle use in my leg.  (3) I ran a marathon not that long ago, and it was a tough one.  So I cancelled all of my other OTF classes I had signed up for for the week and decided to focus on walking in the shoes to more fully adjust, stretching and foam rolling my tight/sore calf, and doing some low impact lifting.

Wednesday

• Foam rolling
• Swimming for 20 minutes.  That’s right SWIMMING.  I am not a great swimmer, and I get bored pretty quickly, but I do enjoy some time in the pool, and we have a lovely free community pool nearby.  I’m glad I worked this in and hope to do more swimming going forward.
• 5 mile walk commute

Thursday

• Foam rolling
• Quick lift (deadlifts, kettlebell swings)
• Long, long walk — about 10 miles because I didn’t make it to the CorePower class I was hoping to attend

Friday

• 6 mile walk to see the Cherry Blossoms (photo above)
• UVA Speed Clinic exercises
• Basketball game watching

Saturday

• Reese’s PB egg eating
• Crossfit with my husband.  I have dabbled in Crossfit before but I don’t do it regularly.  My husband does, so when we were out of town for Easter, he looked up a “box” nearby.  The workout of the day (“WOD”) didn’t include any burpees or muscle-ups, so I agreed to join him for a morning workout before brunch with the Easter bunny (ah so many children…).  The trainer and other folks in the class were absurdly nice to us, and the workout was great.  After a warmup of stretches and drills, we did 3 rounds of one minute of each of these circuits:  weighted step ups (great for the glutes and hip stabilizers!), push ups, rowing, wall balls, sumo kettlebell high pulls (yes, I smacked myself in the face once with the kettlebell), and a minute of rest.  It was a nice way to mix things up.

Sunday

• 30 mins on the bike trainer while watching basketball
• Foam roll while watching basketball
• UVA Speed Clinic exercises

This coming week I am going to go back to OTF to see how things feel.  Here’s what’s on the schedule:

• OTF X 3
• CorePower Yoga X 3
• Run 10 miles
• Lose some body fat
• Do UVA Speed Clinic remedial exercises DAILY

Did you do anything fun or fitness-related this past week?  Any other runners out there do Crossfit regularly?  Anyone else running VCM???  I’d also love to hear from anyone that has mystery lower-leg pain that is neither a traditional achilles pain nor a shin splint?  And somewhat rhetorial question: is there anything that foam rolling can’t fix?