4th straight 50 mile week

Finished last week with 52 miles...  my 4th week in a row breaking the 50 mark...  maybe not 100% surprising that I'm a bit injured now.

My left leg MCL area is tight and sore.  Kind of a strange thing.  It doesn't bother me that much when running but it's tender.  I ran hard on it over the weekend and it felt okay but later on it was barking.

  I'm thinking to take a few days off to see if I can snap out of it.  Hate to keep running on it and make it worse.  At the same time I'd hate to lose the fitness I've been building... always the conundrum, if I keep running on it will it heal?  Also, wondering if the treadmill has anything to do with it?  Just doesn't seem like a normal injury since it's not really used when I run and I can run on it without too much discomfort.

Despite my woes, I still (possibly inadvisably) whipped out a PR setting 15 mile run this weekend.  15 miles, 1:51:05, 7:24 avg pace.  It was my first time outside in 10 days and it was nice to be on the road.  Weather was 31 degrees and perfectly comfortable.  I work my Nike Zoom Fly Tempo Next% which I initially did not care for but have been growing on me with each run.  Primarily have been using them for long runs and have gotten better results out of them each time.  

My fastest mile was 7:14 and my slowest was mile 12 at 7:44.  Mile 11 and 13 were at 7:30.3 and 7:31.4…  every other mile I was able to keep under 7:30 pace.  I ran faster than generally but never out of control with my HR pretty much in the 150-155 range.  I slowed down a bit at the end as my steady effort started to result in reduced results but was able to pick it up at the end, hitting the last mile in 7:16.  

Really nice to get out to the country side.  Meant to go 16 miles but wasn't planning on running as fast as I did and decided that 15 was sufficient.  

I officially decided not to sign up for the 1/2 marathon in a couple weeks so now I'm back to training without a specific goal.  Thinking about a 5K in March... not sure if I'm really 5K ready but I could just do it and see how it goes.  

2021 GOALS PROGRESS UPDATE:

Since it's Monday, its time for a goals update

1. 10,000 pushups:  910 on the year which puts me on pace for 13286 for the year

2. 7500 pulls ups:  664 on the year which puts me on pace for 9694 for the year.  I even did 25 straight chin ups with no stops last week.

3. 26 Hours on the Bike:  4 biking Mondays in a row.  No days off in 2021 so far.  

4. 2021 miles:  198.3 miles, 60 miles ahead of pace.

On the diet front I'm off to a strong start, stepping on the scale at 167.40 this morning, down almost 10 pounds from January 1st...  I'm just about 25% past my goal of mindful eating for 90 straight days.