5K fartlek

Sunday: rest day; legs a bit sore but all right.

Monday: elliptical 35' - woke up a bit late and wanted to do 10K but no time. Legs felt good to go, so I was disappointed that I ran out of time.

Today: Supposed to do an 8K fartlek. Obviously didn't. I don't know what went wrong. The weather was fine (40F, 4C, slightly breezy). My legs felt good and fresh and ready to go this morning. On the warm-up, though, I felt a bit off. I wasn't terribly slow, but the first couple laps were slow (5:18) and I finished in 10:16, so that much was all right. I started the fartlek after some dynamic stretching. By 2K, I knew something was wrong. My legs were hurting - hamstrings, glutes, were complaining - it was that weird soreness I'd had problems with all of last year. I have no idea why it is back, and I'm quite worried. After reaching 3K in 18:12 or something similarly slow, I debated quitting, but decided that if I could keep my "fast" 500s at 3:00 or better I'd keep going - and my 500 was 3:00 so I kept going. I managed another 3:00 500 for the 4th km, but got to 5K with a sad 3:04. My heart rate wasn't high at all - my legs just hurt. The heart rate trace is quite telling - very abnormal. Not as high as I would normally get, but mostly just really quite low during my medium effort intervals. Obviously my legs were the limiting factor, in a big way.

I missed a 100m stretch by accidentally hitting stop on my watch at one point, and it was during a recovery so add about 40 seconds (yeah, I was that slow) and you get a 5K fartlek time of 30:58. That's an easy 5K when I'm fully trained and feeling good, so I am very upset/worried/disappointed.

Hopefully this is just a bump in my recovery…but I'm worried.

Garmin data here.