What a Week of Weather!

There was quite a bit of bad weather all around the world this past week and even though San Diego is usually excluded from this, this week it was a different story. It was brutal conditions all week here. It was raining so hard and the wind was incredible. It was so windy on Thursday that when I was regular walking to our starting point on our training course here, the wind literally knocked me over and I dove into the mud. At that point, I took it as a sign that I should take the day off. Tim had wanted me to take a day off sometime soon anyways because of my hamstring and I hadn't taken a day off since Christmas day, so it was ok.

I tried again to do a fartlek on Tuesday but after doing 4 X 1km/500m I had quite a bit of pain in my hamstring again and so I decided to stop. I wasn't even going very fast, I was only doing 20km pace for the 1km's (4:52/km) but the pain still came on. Since I still had pain I decided to get an appointment with our massage therapist and get her to do some needling in my hamstring since that has helped relax it in the past. Ive still been able to train every day but just easy zone #1 workouts, nothing fast. To say the least, I am a little under prepared for the Millrose Games which are this coming Friday, January 29th. Last year I had only done a handful of speed/fartlek workouts before the race but this year I have only had one! I think that with just my base work that I have a lot of strength and that I should still be able to walk fast, I just wish for my confidence that I would have had a few more workouts faster than zone #1.

This week with the day off I did 114km's. I wanted another 130km + week but because of the day off, it wasn't possible. I did a really good 25km walk yesterday. Its the "fastest" zone #1 walk ive ever done. I walked 2:22:31, a minute faster than last week and it felt so easy and heart rate was good. Today I walked 15km's (in 1:26:14) this morning at around the same pace and we took lactate after to make sure that I haven't been walking to "hard" in my easy days and it was 1.0 lactate which is perfect since it is supposed to be 1.2 or under for zone #1 workouts.

We travel to New York on Tuesday for Millrose Games. We are really looking forward to the trip and to see family and friends. Wish us luck!

Keep on walking,

Rachel