Jan 24

FIT:
5.5 days left!  I did a 4.0 today.  I finally started feeling less sore today.  Tired as anything, though -- slept 5 hrs last night.  At least I caught up some on the weekend.  Back in debt, but maybe I can catch back up. 

1 degree treadmill (as always), oxysox, Gel Evolution 3's w/ Spenco insoles, 69 degrees in the gym.  I guess it's similar to a hot taper, which is supposed to be good before a marathon.  HR was 154bpm immed postrun.
I did a 1 mi warmup, then 2 mi at easyMP(3:40, ~ 8:23 pace) with faster-than-MP(7:30 pace) striders every 1/2 mi, then 1 mi normal running.  My hips weren't great.  Boo.  More stretching needed... it was more the back of my hips... like upper butt this time, rather than the side of my right hip, like usual.  I'm reading Brain Training by Matt Fitzgerald, so I tried some of the proprioceptive cues while I was running.  It gives you something to think about while you're running.  I don't have issues associating (vs. dissociating) at all. During races, I associate a million percent.  I may write them down on the back of my bib and think of them during the race.  Woudn't hurt to write it down, to at least have the option.

After the run, I stuck my lower legs in the icy (it's "feels like 35" degrees outside) pool for 5 min.  It's time for my legs to stop being swollen and sore.  There's a new school of thought that icing may not be optimal for running performance in the long term, b/c it cuts off the natural processes by which your body deals with the stress and comes back stronger.  But this close to the race, I think having it stop being sore/swollen outweighs any LT benefits of not icing.

4.0 in 33:11, 8:18 ave.  Splits> 8:28, 8:13, 8:08, (25:40 5K), 8:20.