Recovery Week, Sore Calves and New Shoes

The past week was a short working week with the Easter long weekend. It was also a recovery week after Run for the Kids so my normal training routine was changed up abit.

At Monday night's session I was still pretty sore from the race the day before. Lower back and hamstrings were pretty tight so I decided it was best not to attempt a recovery run, but walk instead to get my legs moving after sitting all day at work. I like to think I'm pretty in tune with my body these days, can listen to it and know when to pull back a bit. With 11 weeks to go, I'm also being pretty cautious - I want to make it to that start line! 

I usually alternate my running days with FIRE/weight days but my three FIRE sessions were packed into three days earlier in the week because of the short week, with most of my running later in the week.

Friday morning was Good Friday, so running crew session was scheduled to be something a bit different. We headed to the property of one of our crew member's in Kangaroo Ground. He's on 33 acres with the most epic driveway I've ever seen! From the house to the front gate, it was about a 600m steady hill climb. I'm not a hill fan at the best of times but have a few training races coming up with hilly courses so was keen to take it on. 
The session was 25 mins - as many reps of that hill as you could do. Well, I managed 2 reps before my calves started to seize and cramp up while on the third incline. 
I've had issues with painful calves since my second half marathon training, they fatigue easily and pull up sore and tight - it's been nothing major that's ever stopped me running, it's just annoying and can slow my pace down when it's really bad. 
I do my best to minimise it as much as possible, I wear compression socks EVERY time I run, sleep in them the night after a run (I know the jury is still out on whether compression garments actually work, but they work for me so that's all I care about!), stretch, take magnesium supplements, regular epsom salt baths and have recently been having regular dry needling. The dry needling in addition to everything else has been amazing, I was convinced they had been improving over the last couple of weeks too.
I think Friday's epic hill reps was such a steeper, longer incline than what my calves are used to, so after the initial two reps, I scaled it back and finished the off with hill sprints on a shorter section of the driveway. They held up over the shorter incline and I was able to finish off the session that way.
Even after stretching and an epsom salt bath later that day, I pulled up with the worst DOM's I've ever felt lower calves and was hobbling around in pain while walking for 3 days! So the calves are still a work in progress, especially when it comes to hills.
I definitely wasn't confident I'd be able to run on Saturday when I was struggling to even walk but went along anyway. Surprisingly, once I started to run, the pain wasn't affecting me at all. I did an easy 60 min long run on the trails around Lysterfield Lake with the running crew and rested on Sunday.

Saturday I also went down to Active Feet in Heathmont to get fitted for new runners for race day...EXCITING! It's always fun getting fitted for shoes, our friend and fellow running buddy Steve is the manager so he always looks after us and we get to test out a few pairs of shoes.
I'm currently in Mizuno Wave Inspire 9's which have been good to me. Mizuno changed them recently so Steve suggested a shoe with a slightly higher heel drop might help with my calf issues. So I tested 5 or so pairs and ended up settling on Asics GT-2000. I've never run in Asics before but they felt great so I'm looking forward to slowly transitioning over to them.