Limping along

I had a couple of good runs amongst a week in which my main goals were 1) to not lose fitness while 2) try to nurse the right hamstring back to a healthy state.

• I rested Monday, did two sessions on an elliptical trainer, one Wed morning followed by an easy/steady paced Wednesday night run of 18 km with marathon babes, Mary & Satohi.
• The other elliptical was on Thursday night (with the only running that day being 3 km on the treadmill waiting for an elliptical to become available).
• Backed up Friday morning for a run that was to really just be lower aerobic, but became upper aerobic. I think all the muscle fatigue is gone and all fibers are firing again. A couple of laps were comfortably down under 4:10/km, but then some heart rate drift crept in and the pace had to shift down a bit. It was still a satisfying run to come through with the injury feeling not too bad.
• Saturday I clocked up an easy 14.
• Then today, we did a bit of a funky trip from Yoyogi Park, our regular haunt, down to the Imperial Palace (6 km). I ended up running five laps (4.95 km each) of the Palace and back to Yoyogi a different way (7 km) for a total of a shade under 38 km in 3:10:56. I had no idea of the pace early on, but I have just checked my log and realized that it was low 5:00/km. From around 20 km (lap 3) I picked up the pace to 4:40/min for two laps, but by the end of the second I was a cooked goose. I still had to run back to Yoyogi Park by myself, having lost Gareth and Colin earlier to common sense. Then, mercifully, a few km from the end I bumped into the marathon babes. They were finishing off their 30 km run and were also heading to the Park. They were a real godsend as I was ready to just lie down and die. Seriously. But they hitched me up to their little red caboose and dragged me back to the park.
  
• Total for the week: 108 km. Not to bad. But I till feel a bit like I am slowly falling apart.