obsidian-vault/Runs/2026-09-13.md

---
date: 2026-09-13
type: run
tags: [run, late-morning, week2, aborted, flare]
---

# Run — 2026-09-13

**2.57 km in 20:49 — 8'06" pace at 133 bpm (max 149). The week-2 long run, stopped: left lateral ankle (peroneal) after the first calf tightness at ~2 km, then a limp on the walk home. Fourth consecutive run with calf/achilles-adjacent symptoms, first one to end the run. The HR story is the clean part: 133 avg with zero anaerobic minutes — a genuine zone-2 jog that the legs refused to keep going. Splits tell the whole story: 6'52" → 8'36" → ~9'23" → stop.**

## Data

| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Distance | 2.57 km |
| Duration | 20:49 |
| Avg pace | 8'06" /km |
| Fastest pace | 5'45" /km (Instantaneous best) · km 1 = 6'52" |
| Avg HR | 133 bpm |
| Max HR | 149 bpm |
| Cadence | 150 spm (max 173) |
| Stride | 82 cm · 3,142 steps |

| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| HR recovery (2min) | not measured (run stopped) |
| VO₂Max | 46 ml/kg/min (held, "average") |
| Aerobic training stress | 1.1 · watch recovery: 3 h |
| Total / active calories | 209 / 178 kcal |

**HR zones:** Extreme 0 min · Anaerobic **0 min** · Aerobic 10 min · Fat-burning 7 min · Warm-up 2 min. Splits: **6'52" → 8'36" → 0.57 km in 5:21 (≈9'23"/km) → stop** (412 + 516 + 321 = 20:49 ✓). Running form: ground contact 320 ms, balance L 50.3% / R 49.7% (symmetric — no gait compensation showing today).

## Sleep — Night before

**9h 27min** · 23:39→09:06 · REM: 9% · Deep: 20% · HRV: **119** · Resting HR: 47 · Woke: 0× · Score: 83/100

> 83 points, better than 87% of users. Duration is the longest in the log (9h27) but the architecture is repair-shaped, not rested: deep 20% (bottom of the normal band), light 71% (high), REM 9% (low — third night in the log under 10%), continuity 97, breathing 100, SpO₂ 98%, respiratory 14 brpm. **Resting HR 47 — below the personal range (48–58) and the lowest reading in the log.** So the nervous system was NOT the limiter: HRV mid-range, RHR excellent, zero wake-ups. It was day-after-concert recovery sleep, and it did its job. See [[Sleep/2026-09-13]].

## How it felt

> Both calves tight at the back first, then the left leg started to feel "not right" — felt like running with a slight limp, so he stopped rather than pushing on. Walking home was possible only limping on half the leg. Left lower-leg muscle very tight; left outer ankle painful. After ~15 min of sitting the tightness cleared and the ankle pain halved, but didn't disappear.
>
> *"The pain is already half gone, after sitting for 15 mins, but it just shows that I really need to work on my feet flexibility/mobility."*

*(**48 h before:** Friday concert in 0-drop flat shoes — hours of jumping and dancing, alcohol, bed after 3 am. Saturday: heavy fatigue, left outer ankle already loaded, no pain while walking in a different shoe. **Load chain:** plyometric leg session → night → loaded Saturday → Sunday run. **Soft tissue, not bone:** pain halving after 15 min of sitting rules out a fracture; the site (behind/under the lateral malleolus) is the peroneal tendon — the exact tissue his 4 cm left dorsiflexion overloads. HRV recovered ≠ tendons recovered.)*

## Comparison

| Metric | Sep 4 | Sep 6 | Sep 9 | Sep 10 | **Sep 13 (today)** |
|--------|-------|-------|-------|--------|--------------------|
| Distance | 5.04 km | 6.07 km | 3.24 km | 4.05 km | **2.57 km (stopped)** |
| Duration | 36:31 | 41:59 | 19:21 | 26:52 | **20:49** |
| Avg pace | 7'15" | 6'55" | 5'58" | 6'38" | **8'06"** |
| Avg HR | 159 bpm | 157 bpm | 157 bpm | 154 bpm | **133 bpm** |
| Max HR | 176 bpm | 179 bpm | 180 bpm | 169 bpm | **149 bpm** |
| Cadence | 156 spm | 161 spm | 168 spm | 162 spm | **150 spm** |
| Sleep HRV | 111ms | 74ms | 127ms | 123ms | **119ms** |

**The comparison that matters is HR, not pace:** 133 avg / 149 max is the first run in the log where the aerobic system was never stressed (0 anaerobic minutes). Every previous run this block sat at 154–159 avg. So this wasn't a fitness failure at 8'06" — it was a genuinely easy jog, correctly paced for an easy day, that the ankle ended. **The progressive fade (6'52" → 8'36" → ~9'23") is the tissue talking**, not the engine.

## Verdict

**The right run to stop, for the fourth time in a row — except this time it stopped itself.** The gate held perfectly on the mental side: the pace was set at 8'06", HR stayed at 133 and never crossed 149, and when the left leg went he walked home instead of finishing the distance. That is the exact behaviour the plan pays for, applied to an injury instead of to fatigue.

The honest part is that this was avoidable load, not bad luck: the tightness had already been logged three runs in a row (Sep 6 left achilles, Sep 9 calf-achilles, Sep 10 bilateral), and Friday's concert added a plyometric leg session on top of it. **The ramp was the mistake** — Sep 2 → 13 was the highest-volume stretch of the year (~2.6 km/run-day, 24 km in 12 days) on the worst-conditioned ankles. `Reviews/2026-year-in-runs` has that pattern in full.

**Not a reset.** Short-run pace is untouched vs July at the same HR (Jul 20: 3.01 km @ 5'57"/158 vs Sep 9: 3.24 km @ 5'58"/157) — the engine is intact, the tissue is the repair item.

**Return-to-running gate:** walk limp-free → 10 single-leg heel raises pain-free → then a short easy run. Nothing before both. This is a scheduled down week anyway (Sep 14–20: one run slot on Wed Sep 16, then the company hike), so no training is being lost — and the hike, on uneven ground, is now the largest ankle risk of the entire block.

## Connected

- [[Sleep/2026-09-13]]
- [[Reviews/2026-year-in-runs]]
- [[Health/mobility]]
- [[Runs/2026-09-10]] (previous run — third consecutive achilles-tightness report)
- [[Runs/2026-08-29]] (the last time a run was stopped by illness — same HR-inflation pattern, different cause)
- [[Half-marathon-plan]]