I am still going to give it a few more days before I try to figure out what to do. Likely it’s a tendon problem and continued rest will fix it. Sunday would be the earliest day I would attempt a run, but it will likely, pain permitting, be next week some time.

Better to miss now, and get back to training than missing a month. Or worse, tearing a tendon.

Time to smarten up on this injury.

I am not sure what to make of it, or what the course of action is. If it’s the Achilles tendon, and where it inserts, that is also bad news, but it’s not the kind of pain that I am reading about online.

I am debating riding the bike tomorrow instead of running. We’ll see. If I run, it will be 3 miles, slow. Then off Friday for my homage to my hometown.

While I am excited to see family and friends, I also dread going home, so it’s a mixed blessing. Such are the trials and tribulations of middle aged men who haven’t grown up.

I like that I had talked myself into the idea that I was going to actually run 8:40’s. I fool only myself.

I just put this up as a novelty. Bill had brought his Flip Cam to the race so we were dorking around with it. Those things are pretty fun! I was also interested in film of my stride, so we shot this as well.

However I am not sure it shows too much.

Except for being up until 2:30 drinking beer and then getting up at 7 am it came off without a hitch. I bet Lance Armstrong trains this way.

Bike 0
Run
Bike 1

Well, I am not usually one to have fun. I tried to keep it cool for the first mile and had some success, turning in an 8:14. I was shooting for 8:40, so I chalked that up to first mile exuberance. Then, well…I took off. I clocked in at 7:47 for the second mile and then a 7:54 for the last, and ~55 seconds for the final .13 (according to my garmin). Giving me an unofficial time of 24:52.

It was fun, but stupid. I should have stuck to my plan. My heal was pretty sore after that.

Since then I have been using ice, advil and lots of stretching and it actually feels pretty good now.

I think I am injured, but I think it will be ok. Going to reduce pace and mileage this week, and lots of RAID (Running, Advil, Ice and Drinking).

I am going to take a bit of a step back though. I have been overdoing it, albeit on purpose somewhat, in an effort to build a strong base. However one of the cornerstones of that is affirming that fitness is not derived from hard workouts, it is derived from the rest after hard workouts. To that end, I am going to cut the week to 4 days. This will help with some time crunch I am feeling as well as allowing me to heal a bit more.

I ran 5 miles VERY SLOW tonight. And while it felt fine, I am not feeling recovered. I still have a lot of muscle soreness, and there is a pain in my heel that is coming and going. Before that turns into a month long lay off, I am going to do the prudent thing, and step back.

Current plan is to take off tomorrow. 5 easy on Thursday, Friday off, then some easy miles plus a “temposish” pace for the Spirit of Gettysburg race on Saturday.

I know some people think it’s silly to not race a race hard, but I really just go for the t-shirts anyway, so whatever.

Between the heat, skipping my off day and running primarily on pavement today, my legs are pretty sore. On the upside I finally tried a gel while running. I took it at 7 miles into the 10. I am not sure it did anything, but that wasn’t really why I tried it. I mostly tried to make sure I wouldn’t…have to use the restroom…right after downing it. And while that part worked out in my favor, and the taste wasn’t as bad as I made out in my head, it was still gross. 7 miles of hot sweaty running, the last thing I want is a pouch of hot vanilla frosting sliding across my tongue. Not to mention I had only brought Gatorade along for the run, so washing it down with more sickening sweetness sucked.

I had to go way slow, I was feeling pretty ugly and beat up by the end.

Oh well, tomorrow is an off day. Then the plan takes it a little easier than I have been, and I plan to follow it. Only 16 more miles in the rest of the week.

Motionbased link

Some stats:
Distance: 10 miles
Time: 1:53:02
Pace: 11:17
Avg HR: 155 bpm
Calories Burned: 1414

I have a little soreness in the quads and above my patellas, nothing earth shattering though.

Todays run was a slow one here in Carlisle.

1 mile splits: 10:24, 10:39, 10:56, 10:28, 10:07

Some stats:
Distance: 5 miles
Time: 52:35
Pace: 10:30 minutes/mile
Avg heart rate: 141
Calories burned: 730

I wish I had some sage advice to give you all on how I managed to do this. But I don’t. It was tough, it got a little easier all the time, and now it’s bearable. The initial days and weeks last year were hard, and emotionally draining. I don’t recommend it, unless of course you are a smoker, then I for sure recommend it.

Most of the time these days, I don’t want to smoke. I don’t even think about it. Periodically though the urge does strike me. However it’s not as strong as it used to be. I also have this total fascination with running, making smoking impossible.

Looking back over all the posts I wrote early on, makes me not want to go back there for any reason. I am happy that I quit, and proud that I made it a year.

I would be remiss if I didn’t at least give some credit to my online friend Maggie. I don’t know her in real life, but she happened by my blog when I started talking about quitting and chantix. She was a few weeks ahead of me, and it was awesome to read where she was at all times because I knew I was right behind her. Very inspirational. Thank you Maggie.

And thanks to John who lit a fire under my ass and got me running again. And Eric for making me stick to running in those early days when it’s so easy to drift away.

Thanks to all my friends who posted congratulations to me on the blog, and thanks to all my friends that hung out with me and put up with me early on (though, putting up with me is an ongoing struggle only a few manage and really has little to do with smoking).

Thanks, all of you.