Starting Over, Again

Over the last couple of weeks, my training has really suffered. I have
only myself to blame, of course, as I either train too hard too
quickly or talk myself out of even a simple workout. "Why would I want
to run for only a half hour?" I would say in one breath, and in the
next strap on my Vibrams for a 9 mile paced run with no build-up.

This is a recognized pattern with my training: I start a disciplined
campaign to "kill it", followed by "time off". It's never
"intentional", but it happens just the same. Take January for example:
166 miles run! I took on the 2015 in 2015 challenge, and I was doing
pretty well with the average 5.6 miles per day. Then comes February,
where my discipline flags and my mileage dropped off precipitously.

Determined to "start again", I made the aforementioned mistake and ran
a "barefoot" 9-10 miler coming off a two week break. I felt great and
had a lot of fun on the trail. The following day, my legs were
trashed, weak. Tuesday was a sore day, but Wednesday I walked around
favoring my calves heavily, and the inside of my right knee needed to
be iced for two nights. It wasn't until Friday that I started to feel
normal again.

So, I'm going to start over, again. Hopefully, these 40 years of age
will afford me some sort of wisdom in the approach. The July Voyager
50 will arrive quickly enough; there's no reason to kill myself so
early in the season. I get up early enough in the day that I can
afford to run or workout before work. Let's see if I can simply get
back into the practice of daily running.