Training mistakes

I’ve heard it hundreds of times “don’t increase your weekly mileage by more than 10 percent at a time,” and yet I’ve made the mistake more than once. This time I even read Lauren Fleshman‘s article in Runner’s World about the training mistakes she often makes, and I still did quite a few of them myself:

1. My biggest mistake: Increasing by more than 10 percent in a week (and more than that when comparing January and February. I ran more miles in three weeks of February than I did all of January.)
2. “Stick to The Plan. ALWAYS.” Check. In order to make sure I got in all of my runs this week, I forced in a run on a day I usually do CrossFit to make room for a hike on my usual easy run day. Why not just hike and count that as my easy run? Because I’m an idiot.
3. “Rest days are for babies.” See above.
4. “Be a hammerhead – if it’s not hard, it’s not doing anything.” Just when I thought I was getting better about this, I added speedwork. I did make a conscious effort to slow down my other runs so there was an actual difference in my easy runs, but a little late it would seem.

What did all of this get me? A mild case of plantar fasciitis. Time to take a few days off from running and spend all of the time I would have been running on stretching, rolling out my arches, icing (have I mentioned I hate ice?), and doing just about everything else I can to heal faster and relax the overly tight and irritated plantar fascia.