Shuffling on

Mid-week check-in: Looking back on Monday night's workout, I think Amy's comment was right; I don't think that the miles were marked correctly. Maybe the overall distance was about right, but the individual miles didn't seem to make sense based on my effort. To further justify this, I had another workout on Wednesday night consisting of 5 reps of (4min hard, 3min recovery jog). I did a 20 min warmup over to Wash Park and then went into it. It went very well in comparison with 2 days earlier. I ran very even for all 5 of the reps averaging 5:53-:55 pace for the hard parts and probably 7:10-15 pace for the recovery.
The challenging part this week has, as always, been dealing with my bodies nagging pains. The Achilles is doing a bit better since my buddy Jordan Jones showed me a great eccentric exercise last Saturday to strengthen it. The exercise is quite literally working a miracle for me! Unfortunately, the Piriformis Syndrome issues are only getting worse in my left side. Regardless of any of the stretching and foam rolling that I do it just keeps tightening up more and more. So much so that it has now tightened up my left Hamstring incredibly. It's shortening up the left side of my stride (turning my run into a sort of shuffle) and I'm worried that it made lead to another, greater, injury if I don't figure out a solution soon. If anyone out there in Blog-land knows any great resources, please let me know! For today, I resorted to visiting one of my clients, an acupuncturist, and giving that a go. It was a really unique experience, which I hadn't had before. Not painful, but definitely created some interesting sensations that are not experienced in everyday life. It remains to be seen whether any solid effects will come out of it, but it definitely did seem to release some tension in my lower back, at least for the short-term.
As for mileage, I did a very easy day of 6 miles on Tuesday. Got in 11.25 in my workout last night and then got in another easy 9 miles today. Another easy day tomorrow before my long run on Saturday!