Crazy 8

11:15 AM - Westboro - 8 miles, 1:00:00.

I'm not sure exactly how far I ran this morning, but it was somewhere in the range of 8 miles, likely a little longer, possibly a bit shorter, but somewhere in that neighborhood. One of the biggest things I've been trying not to do since I resumed running again post-stress fracture is getting too caught up in hitting X number of miles in a given day, week or month. Instead, I'm trying to focus on nailing my key workouts and doing whatever it is I need to do in order to recover and stay injury-free in between those sessions. Bill Bowerman said the magic is in the man, not the 100 miles, and I've been telling myself that every time I lace up my shoes to train.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a huge believer in volume, but given my injury history, it's apparent that the old body just can't handle mileage like it used to. It only took a partially torn right Achilles tendon, bad tendinitis in the left one, a bout of tarsal tunnel syndrome, a nasty case of posterior tibial tendinitis, two sacral stress fractures and various other aches and pains for me to finally reach that conclusion. So, in an effort to keep myself healthy, and since I'm doing a fair amount of my recovery work on the bike, I'm starting to log my total training volume in minutes first, then figuring out the miles afterward. Not exactly revolutionary, but it's a change from the norm and forces me to think less about covering X miles in Y minutes and more about covering Y minutes and letting X miles equal what they may. So far, so good.