I am going to take one full week off from running and lower body strength training.

It was really hard making this decision.  In fact keeping myself from working out is turning out to be harder than making myself work out.  Unfortunately my foot/ankle is still feeling strained and tender.  I’m going to commit up front to taking one full week and letting it heal so I can move forward.

Obviously this means no running (starting with what would have been my first good hill workout of the program today).  I’m going to replace any scheduled speed work with swim intervals in the pool.  I’m under no illusion that a swim interval equates to a run interval, but it’s better than nothing.

For my easy and long run workouts that I’m skipping I’ll do time-equivalent cycling workouts.  I’m not using cycling intervals (i.e. spinning) to replace the run intervals because while easy spinning is no impact to my foot, hard cycling could still retard the healing process due to the stress. 

I will continue to execute my PU/SU training as planned.  I’m also going to eliminate any strength training or other training that puts undue stress on my ankle.  I’ll have to think about it today and figure out what exactly that is going to look like.  What I’m thinking off the top of my head is to just add some pull-up work to my PU/SU sessions and call it good.  We’ll see.

I’m frustrated and disappointed but I think this is the best way.  I’ll take this week off and pick back up with this week’s workouts next week when my foot feels 100%.  I am very encouraged by HOW frustrated and disappointed I am.  I think it is a powerful indicator of how much of an ingrained habit my training is and how much I enjoy it.

Good sign for the future.