17 miles

“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

I told myself this at mile 14. It wasn’t encouraging to my aching body. Nevertheless, I completed 17 miles. I ran 5 of those miles, however, with a full bladder. Why? Because the first bathrooms that I pass on my run were locked. I have no idea why. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them closed, and of course it was the first time I really had to use them. Thankfully, I made it to the second set of bathrooms, 5 miles later, without any accidents.

Including bathroom/drink breaks, my pace was pretty much exactly the same pace at which I ran my 14-mile-run. Although it’s nice to know I’m not slowing down as the miles keep building, I really would like to see myself getting faster. I’m praying that the cool weather coming this fall will somehow impact my pace, but I have a hard time trusting in temperature alone to get me across the finish line under 6 hours…

Dilemma. Yes, I can switch from the marathon to the half-marathon. And I don’t even have to decide until October. But, it makes sense (at least to me), that I should try to decide sooner, so I can train accordingly.

The Hammer HEED was great. Lemon-Lime tasted completely different from Gatorade’s Limon-Lime or Limon-Lime Sports Beans, but it seemed to do its job and definitly has a conservative amount of sweetness to it.

On a side note–school starts again Wednesday, and I move into the dorm on Saturday. Class work load might be the sole determinator of whether I drop down to the Half. School definitly should come first. Theoretically, I have time to both study and train. The one difficulty, though, is having the disipline to do both with 100% effort. But such is life, I suppose.

Update: ITBS

Apparently, I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m sure you already figured that out. The iliotibial band does NOT run from the hip to the inside of the knee, as I inaccurately asserted in a previous post, but it runs down the outside of the leg to the outside of the knee. (Although I still think I saw “inside” in some article I was reading…)

Therefore, I have no idea why my upper leg randomly feels tight at times. I’m still doing as much stretching as possible, but I still don’t do enough.

The 14-mile long run went well. I need to start deciding when I’ll be stopping at aid stations and then mimic the same conditions on long runs (only 4 ubber-long ones left!). Yesterday I bought two single-serving pouches of Hammer HEED, the energy drink mix that will be used at the race. I normally use regular Gatorade powder (cheeper), but I decided that I needed to at least try this new stuff. And you never know–I might like it better.

A Walk in the Park…

I’ll be scouting out a new long run route tomorrow–walking. At the same time I might also try to find part of the route that the marathon takes. I like to be prepared as much as possible for any type of event, but especially this marathon.

Saturday I run 14 miles as my long run. It’s “only 2 more miles” than what I ran two weeks ago, but that never changes anything. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to hurt. I’m going to feel exausted afterwords. But I’m also going to love doing it… but probably after the fact.

My leg seems to be healing. Slowly. For some reason, I notice it more walking around than when I’m running. Got to go stretch!

ITB Syndrome

Apparently, ITBS is what has been plaguing my left thigh for a couple of weeks. I had never had any problems with the ITB whatsoever, so I’ve never stretched it and didn’t consider it when my leg started hurting in a “non-sore muscle” way. Until, that is, the weird feeling started alternating between the thigh and the inside of the knee. Bingo.

Now I’m doing the stretches, but I’m really opposed to backing off of my training plan. I am, however, starting to second-guess my marathon goal, and somehow the half-marathon looks so much more appealing. Is this just a mid-training psychological battle or are the recent injuries a sign of what is to come?

Marathon Ambition

It seems like whenever I try to update, I always get sidetracked and never get back to finishing. Anyways…

In an earlier post, I mentioned possibly running the Outer Banks Marathon in November. Well, instead, I decided to go for the City of Oaks Marathon. Same month (before my 20th birthday), a little sooner, a little closer to home, and a little cheaper. So I’ve registered, and I just completed week 14 of this plan. However, I must say I’ll definitly go back to creating my own running plans after the marathon. But for now, my only goal is to finish the marathon within the maximum time allowed–6 hours. I know that is plenty of time  for most people, but I run slow. So slow, in fact, that you probably can’t even imagine. Seeing that this marathon has significantly fewer participants than the other well-known events, I may very well be the last person to reach the finish line. I really don’t like that idea, but… it’s worth a shot.

I contemplated settling for the half-marathon this year. It’s a more logical step-up from 5K races. I would have more confidence, and I would also have time to throw in some speedwork into my schedule. But, I know that if I completed the half-marathon, there will always be the “what if.”

College.

Let’s see, where did I leave off? Yes, it has been awhile. I have moved, college has started, and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t accomplished any mileage goals since I moved into my dorm room.

But I did buy new shoes in July–a pair of Saucony ProGrid Guide. I also ran my farthest distance before school started–6.2 miles (10km). I accomplished my run at turtle pace, but I don’t care about that so much.

Currently, my goal is to just keep running. I don’t usually have a lot of time for long runs, and so my runs have just stayed in the 25-40 min. time range. My goal is still to run the Outer Banks Marathon in 2009. We’ll see if that happens…

Oops. I think it’s time for an update.

My monthly mileage for June didn’t come out like it should have, but I have good excuses.

The first week I took completely off from running because of my knee. The second week consisted of one slow 2.4 mile run. My cousins came for a visit, meaning that I didn’t have time, and when I did have time I was dead tired. But that doesn’t really bother me, because I knew my knee was still healing, and we were doing tons of sightseeing on the side. Visiting relatives left on the third week, meaning–freedom! I only accomplished two runs of 2.4 miles (and a short run-walk day), however, because my knee still felt “weird,” and I didn’t want to undo the healing that I had been patiently waiting for. I finished off the month with an addition 10.8 miles relatively evenly dispersed. My longest run of the month was my 3.1 miles that I accomplished yesterday, and my knee was okay. Yay!

I found quite a few supposedly good running stores in my area of NC, so I’ll be visiting one of those right away when I get there in three weeks.

For now, I’ll just be building up weekly mileage by the 10% rule and trying to create a “long” run as well.

A synopsis of the week.

Monday–I finished up my training plan with a 5K run, which went a little beyond what the plan actually called for. Yay!

Tuesday–I wanted to go running since I felt “freed” from my plan and there wasn’t anything to tell me that I couldn’t run on consecutive days, but my knee ached a little, so I decided to hold off.

Wednesday–A nice, slow run. My knee still felt a bit funny so I didn’t want to do anything that I would regret.

Friday–Unfortunately, my wisdom on Wednesday somehow left me on Friday. I ran 5K at a moderate pace despite constant “discomfort.” I won’t call it pain, because is was bearable, but it hurt. I really thought it would eventually go away mid-run like it had in the past. Well… I got home, stretched, ate breakfast, gave up on school work for the day, and took two ibuprofen which knocked me out for three hours. Yes, that last part is a little scary as I look back on it. The drowsy side effect could have been intensified my a slight lack of sleep, or maybe I now know why I usually take only one tablet (200 mg) for headaches during the day and save two tablets for nighttime.

Saturday through Sunday–I took off. I really wanted to start running four times a week this week, but I figured that recovery is more important at this point. Tomorrow, Monday, I’m going to hit the bike. And maybe the next day, and the next day… but we’ll see. Although I’m not noticing any apparent swelling, ice sure feels good.

The cause of my problem? Yes, it’s my shoes. No one needs to tell me. But, if I were to wait to start running again until after I bought new, proper shoes, I would be waiting until the end of July. (Shoes are cheaper in the US at this point, there is more variety to choose from in the US, and I don’t know enough about shoes to just order some. I need a running store.) Sorry, I just can’t wait that long. However, now I’m starting to think I might need to limit my weekly mileage until then.

Water Fun.

My family and I went to Prague for the first time Thursday and Friday. Living in Europe for nine years, you would think that we would have been there by now. Anyway, it was fun–I’m glad I can say I’ve been there now–but it’s tremendously overrated. I didn’t run on Friday while I was there (I probably should have just so I could say “I ran in Prague.”), but I’m going to count all of the walking as cross-training. : )

We arrived home around 9 p.m. Friday night to discover that a pipe under the kitchen sink had burst, and 3 inches of water now covered half of our downstairs. After calling up some friends to help us, we started moving out affected items and cleaning out the water. Besides soaked walls, wooden floor, some furniture, and some other insignificant items (like a board game and The Confidence Man, ), our greatest concern was for some photos stored in a cardboard box in the living room. So… my sister and I were awake until 2 a.m. pulling apart photos and negatives (from the pre-digital era) and spreading them out upstairs to dry. Meanwhile, my dad and friends pulled up part of our buckled wooden floor in order to save a connecting staircase (after taking pictures of the damage for insurance purposes, of course). I was rather annoyed and scared at first, but after thinking about all of the worse things that could have happened, it doesn’t seem so bad now.

Needless to say, I didn’t run Saturday morning as planned. I still felt like running later, so I decided to go in the evening instead. It wasn’t as excruciatingly hot as previous evening runs, but I felt like a windshield. Every so often I had to brush off little flying insects from my clothes, spit them out of my mouth, or wipe them from my eyes. Not only did the bugs irritate me, but some rather rude teenagers sitting right on the path didn’t want to move out of my way when they saw me coming. Have I mentioned how I don’t like running at that time of day?

Tomorrow is my last day of my training plan. I got a little behind schedule because I purposefully cut Saturday short, but I’m still pleased with myself.

A Week of 5K Run and a Rainy Day

I’m well again. The whole sore throat ordeal was rather peculiar. Usually two or three days after I come down with a sore throat the sore throat goes away and sniffles, and maybe a cough, takes its place. But not this time. Each morning I woke up expecting to need tissues throughout the day, but I never did. Weird, but I’m glad I’m better now. Those head colds sometimes last forever…

My initial goal for Monday was to run at an easy pace for 30 minutes. By the time 30 minutes rolled around, however, I felt great and decided to make it 5 km instead. This would happen to be the very first time in my life that I’ve accomplished running that distance without walk breaks.  Yay for me!

Today, on the other hand, was not so fun. I woke up to rain. I probably would have still run, since it was only drizzle at that point, but today I wanted to run with my dad, which I regularly do. Well, Daddy is not a fan of rain. We waited until 4 p.m., and by that time the rain had long stopped and the roads had mostly drained as well. Our goal was to run to a certain point–somewhere around 2.5 to 3 miles. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but around the 1.5 mile mark things started to hurt. First my calf felt “funny”, and then the funny feeling pain gradually made its way up to the spot around my knee that it loves to hang out at. Besides that, both my dad and I overdressed for the weather. Sure, the thermometer said 15C/60F, but it sure felt cold when we stepped outside because it was cloudy and damp. We should have went by the temperature. Whether it was a faster pace, the unusual time of day, a little less sleep, or the pinto beans I ate for lunch yesterday, I didn’t feel like I had much energy. We finally made it though, but I’m sure glad it’s over. It’s interesting how two similar runs can feel completely different.

I’ll be trying to add a bit of cross-training to my schedule in the near future. I eventually want to increase the number of days that I run. I don’t think I’m ready to do that quite yet, so I figured that if I go ahead and do something on the extra days I plan to run I will already have a habit for that time of day.