Insomnia

I can't sleep.

On a usual Saturday night I would have been asleep for close to three hours by now (it is 2420 hrs here in Illinois). Tonight I'm wide awake. I'm pretty sure it is the Mr. Pibb I had with dinner. I tend to not have any caffeine after I've finished my two - three cups of coffee I drink in the morning between 0530 and 0730 but tonight I decided to have a soda with dinner instead of a beer or just water.

So here I am typing in my blog while my wife sleeps peacefully across the hall and my son slumbers in the room next door.

I was going to go for an eight miler at 0430 but I'm thinking that I might go earlier if I keep tossing and turning.

I've been nursing a sore right hamstring for awhile now. The chiropractor I go to has been deep tissue massaging it and running therapy on it (where he sticks an electrode to it to make it fire) and he has forbidden me to run hills or speedwork. I can still run easy, bike and do yoga. I have been doing hamstring presses on the stability ball and they suck. I know I should have been doing them all along but even when I'm not sore they hurt. I guess that means that I had some underlying weakness in my hamstrings all along.

I do a yoga pose, the name of which I forget, where I am on all fours to start. The sequence from there goes to extending one arm in front of me and extending the opposite leg behind me. After holding that pose for three breaths I turn and grab my leg with the opposite hand and hold that pose for another three breaths. After that I extend the arm to one side and the leg to the other side and hold there. On that pose, with my right leg stuck out, I can feel marked weakness in comparison to my left. Something isn't right but thanks to my evil chiropractor's ministrations it feels "righter" than it did last weekend. Hopefully I can nip this in the ass so that I can keep up this good season I'm having.

I still have lofty goals of sub-5:20 at the Sizzling Mile, 11:45 at the Parade Run and 18:50 for 5K. I'd love to crank out a sub-19:00 at the Scholastic Challenge but I don't know if that is going to happen. It might have to wait until the PPR.

I've been thinking about my training schedule this past week and I think I've been trying to cram too much crap into a very small bag. A track workout, a tempo workout and a long run in four days of running is too much intensity. I think that when I get healthy and have the okay to run speedwork I will alternate track workouts and tempo workouts every week. Some of you are going "DUH!" but you all know how obsessive we can get about doing more and more when we're running well and want to do better.

I lost sight of my big picture as it pertains to my running. . . train smart to stay injury free. Consistency builds improvement and it is hard to be consistent when you're hurt.

I hope everyone is well and sleeping better than I am.