The week that is less of a pain in the butt. A bit of a boring week with zero pictures. Fail.

Monday – cross training. Swim 1600m. The pool was surprisingly full this morning, full of swim team students who were swimming faster than me during their warmup. There were two lap lanes open but I had to ask share, which I always hate doing. I did my warm up and noticed the guy I was sharing a lane with was (unsurprisingly) faster than I was. So, when he was standing and resting I asked if he had any tips. Turns out, he used to be a swim coach! Poor guy probably gets tired of questions like that, but I really appreciated his looking at my stroke and giving me some pointers. He said that for only swimming for 9 months, I “wasn’t doing bad at all”. I’ll take it! I used my new swim paddles for a few laps and tried to concentrate on what he told me. Apparently I pull too much with my arms only and don’t use enough of my body. I also sometimes end up with my elbow in the water before my hand and cross my hand over too far. Lots to think about.

Tuesday – tempo run ride. My butt was feeling a little better but I didn’t want to risk aggravating it again, so I attempted a tempo on the bike. This proved to be a little harder than I thought because of a closed road, slick roads and traffic, but I did the best I could. I did 18:30 s at 17mph, around 24 minutes at an average 19.7 (was hoping for 20 but just wasn’t making it happen) and then a cool down at 17mph.

Wednesday– speed work. 5 x 1200 with 1:30 rest between each. I had been tempted to just skip all the runs till the end in hopes my butt would heal, but my chiropractor said try it just keep the speed down. I did the first set at marathon pace and then progressively got a little faster. Unfortunately, I still felt it. BUTT (ha, see what I did there) the recovery was much quicker than last week, and by the time we got to our recovery drink location, I already felt 90% better.

Thursday – rest day

Friday – cross train. Did 40 minutes on the bike trainer. Interestingly, my butt felt BETTER.

Saturday – long run. 10 miles at marathon pace (8:23 – I ended up doing 8:24). This one went a little back and forth. Overall though, I had discomfort, but not pain. I took my first mile slower (8:55) and then tried to increase speed. Unfortunately, I forgot I changed my watch settings and accidentally ran the 2nd mile 30 seconds too fast (I was looking at what I thought was lap pace but was actually overall average pace). It a pleasant surprise though because I remember running it thinking “dang, this is way harder than I feel like it should be”. Well, it was because I was running a 7:49/min mile. I stopped to stretch and assess a few times. I felt like it was starting to shift from discomfort to pain at mile 8, but strangely by 9.5 it was totally gone. (I did put some icy hot on the spot that is bothersome and have been taking Plexus Ease, which has turmeric and New Zealand Green Lipped Mussel daily for a few days).

Sunday – cross train. 45 minutes of yoga, focusing on hip openers.

The good news? I’ve had zero pain since Saturday. The bad? My right calf started randomly hurting Sunday night. What is this? Injury roulette??