Update and Longest Run of this Training

So, what has been causing my anxiety of late? Giving my notice at work. I'm not going to go into too many details yet, but I am indeed quitting my job and taking a few months off. I have never ever in my life not been working (since I was 16 years old, so 13 years!), not a summer off, or even a winter break off, I have always worked. And of those 13 years, 9 of them were spent going to school and working full time. It goes without saying that this break has been a long time coming.

Enough about that for now...more to come later...

Onto my long run this weekend!

My training schedule called for 4 miles this past weekend and 4 miles is what I did. My last mile was my fastest mile I ever remember "running" at 10:49 minutes. I was (am!) pretty psyched about that. Here are my stats from the run:

4 miles
11:29/mile
161 bpm
449 calories

Honestly, after this run I felt great. I even got kind of cocky in my head and thought hey, maybe this time I just won't have to worry about injury at all, maybe losing weight means all of my old problems are gone! Can we just say wishful thinking? Because that's what it was.

I went to see my massage therapist on Saturday afternoon and we determined that while I am not injured yet, I am pretty much walking down the same road I did before and am begging for an injury if I don't fix some of my weaknesses. The session was both frustrating and enlightening. While I'm frustrated about having to constantly battle injury, I am glad to have a plan to try and help me NOT get truly injured this time. My current plan is the following:

• Stretch and foam roll every single day
• Stability exercises for my hips/glutes
• Strength exercises for my Tibialis anterior (which is the muscle in front of your shin)
• Get back into practicing yoga which will help with stability and flexibility
• Transition into barefoot running extremely slowly
• TAKE IS SLOW