Long Run...No, but ok.

Dawn with Venus

This morning I set out to do a final long run before Surf City in 2.5 weeks. Got up early and was out the door at about 6am.

Started out at a 10 minute pace for the first 6 miles or so and watched the sun come up (that's Venus..a.k.a. "the morning star", a tiny dot in the upper right corner).

Also got to watch the almost full moon set over the water which was rare to see. A few runners and bikers were out at this hour but not many.

Moonset

I was feeling pretty darn good running in my Nike Frees and figured I just might step up the pace a bit now. I was hoping to reach 20 miles (about 3 loops of this route). I did the next 3 miles at a 9:30 m/m or so and then started to feel my right calf cramping. This is the same place that has been dogging me since a run on vacation in Hawaii. I thought it was healed up but it seems not quite.

After stretching for a while and walking a  bit I was able to negotiate a peace treaty with my recalcitrant muscle and proceeded to do a slow 11-12 minute pace without more cramping. But discretion being the better part of valor (and the smarter way to avoid injury) I aborted the course and beelined for home.

I can tell my fitness is plenty good...it's not peaked but it's plenty good to run a marathon, so it's frustrating to be "hamstrung" from doing a long run by a piece of muscle the width of a pencil (which is about how big the cranky-crampy muscle feels). 

Obviously it needs more time to heal up..and there's no arguing with a muscle...they win. So we'll just have to do shorter and/or easier runs. It's a bit of a mystery why this happened..I'd been doing a lot of cross training and built up a lot of muscle on my quads, etc. Perhaps it's changing too many things at once? I'm really have no idea.

When we set out to test our fitness and have a setback, it's disappointing. But, on the other hand to see a beautiful dawn during an otherwise wonderful 10 mile run, I really can't complain. It's all good.

I'll wait a few days before I try a long run again.