Coming Back from Another (Hopefully Minor) Setback: Some Tweaks to My Approach
For a 2nd time I've had a knee pain flare and now I've begun mileage building for comeback attempt #3. Obviously I went too far and/or too fast (I'm leaning towards "and" being the culprit here). I'm now back up to a 9-mile long run (and a 25-mile week) and I'm taking care to slow down my long runs this time. On the previous two failed build-ups (both times failing after 11.5-mile long runs/31-mile weeks), my longest runs were also my fastest (with many sub-10-min/mile splits and a few sub-9:30-min/mile splits). I'm going to try separating the speed and endurance elements a bit more and put a strict speed limit on my long runs...no more sub-10-min/mile splits. I haven't restarted any kind of speed or quality work yet, but I'll embed speedwork in my medium run once per week starting pretty soon (if everything goes okay). I think it this comeback falls short again, I might need to try something very different. I'm thinking that I'll take