So, this week has gone pretty well. I went out for a short easy run on Monday, went about a mile and a half, just to loosen up my legs. Dr. Tobi had given me the suggestion of putting a cotton ball between my pinky toe and 4th toe to keep my pinky toes from getting so banged up, so I tried that out. Worked pretty well! Tuesday I went for an 8 mile run, and felt fantastic the whole time. No knee or hip pain, and my toes did pretty well too, eventhough they were still blistered up. Wednesday evening Courtney and I went out for what was supposed to be a leisurly ride (my first time on the road since SEPTEMBER!) and we ended up doing about 23 miles with 12 of those miles being nothing but hills. Not little rollers, but big ass hills. Ouch! Not fun for my first time out on the bike this season! But, it was pretty identical to what the course at Quarter/HalfMax is like, so its going to be a great training spot. I'm just feeling a lot better mentally than I was after that 18 mile disaster last weekend, so I'm looking forward to my 10 mile run tomorrow and the Brew to Brew on Sunday. It will be nice to put some fun back into running!

And as a side note, while I was out on my 8 mile run Tuesday, I came across a black lab out running around on 79th street. For those of you familiar with the area, it was somewhere between Nall & Mission, and 79th is pretty busy through there. I could see she had a collar with a tag on, so I got her to come over to me, and just as I was reaching out to look at the tag, she saw a dog in the yard across the street and took off. She missed getting hit by literally about 6"! The guy with the dog in his yard came out and helped me corral her, and it turned out that her tag was just a city ID tag, with no owner or vet info. Luckilly, the guy decided to keep her in his back yard until he could call the city in the morning. So for anyone that has a dog, PLEASE make sure to have a tag on their collar that at least has your vet's info, if not your own!

2 good runs and a really bad one

I ended up only being able to run twice last week due to work, as opposed to my usual 3, but I felt really good on both of those runs. No hip pain or leg pain, and I FINALLY feel like I'm over my sinus infection. So I wasnt too worried about my 18 mile run on Saturday. I'm at the point now where every long run is my longest run ever, so its nerve wracking and exciting at the same time. The weather has been pretty seasonable up until this point, but Saturday was warm and very humid. Something I'm not acclimated to. It was an out and back course, mostly on the Indian Creek trail. I felt good the first 7-8 miles, and then I felt my feet starting to blister up. I typically get blisters on the bottoms of my pinky toes, so I wasnt too suprised. They werent bothering me, so I didnt pay much attention to it. When we got to the aid station at mile 9, my turn around point, there was a first aid kit, so I sat down for a sec to pull my socks off and put vaseline on my toes. Yikes! My blisters were pretty big already, and they had blood in them. Not what I wanted to see. I could also see that I was starting to develop blisters on the sides of my big toes. But still, none of it was bothering me all that much. I took a couple of extra minutes at this aid station making sure I got in plenty of fluids, then headed back for the last 9 miles. The same girl that I had ended up running with on my 16 mile run was also turning around at that point, so it was nice to have a partner. We got about 2 miles, then made a wrong turn, adding about another mile to our total distance. D'oh! Thats one thing I hate about Olathe, the subdivisions are laid out horribly and its easy to lose your way. We got back on track, and I was still doing ok for another couple of miles, though my hips and knees were starting to get sore, and my blisters were becoming more painful. By the time we hit the 14 mile point, the blisters on my pinky toes hurt so bad that I couldnt put any pressure on the outside of my feet. Which meant that I was rolling my feet in, causing blisters to form on the inside of my feet as well. Also, me rolling my feet in was killing my ankles and knees, so I had to resort to walking the last 4 miles.

I felt like SUCH a loser! All of these negative thoughts kept going through my head, and I convinced myself that I wouldnt be able to do the Lincoln Marathon, and I wouldnt be able to do IMFL. Our run had started at the Gary Gribble store, and I had planned on going in to buy some new socks when I finished, but instead I just went to my car and sat there and cried for about 5 minutes. I felt like there was no way I could achieve all these goals I've set for myself. What a baby I was being! So I sucked it up and made myself start thinking good thoughts. By Sunday I was feeling a lot better, and was encouraged by the fact that my joints and muscles were barely sore, and my blisters had gone down quite a bit. So today I'm feeling even better, and my blisters are just about gone. I might go for a run tonight, or I might ride, depending on how my feet feel when I get home. But one thing is for sure, I REFUSE to have another day like Saturday. I absolutely will not let myself get so down about a bad workout. Everyone has a bad workout from time to time, and its no reason to throw in the towel. Last summer Joe Friel gave a talk at HalfMax about the power of your mental state, and one of the things I took away from that is that every single workout you do, you should file away something positive in your head. So my positive thing from Saturday is that despite the pain I was in, I DID finish my 18 miles. I resisted the urge to flag down a car and hitch a ride back to the starting point. So, yay for that :)

Bad training weekend

Well, Saturday was St. Pat's day, and we had to go up to Leavenworth for Dan's family reunion and to walk in the parade. It's a nice big Irish family, so it was lots of fun. But because of that, I decided to postpone my Saturday long run to Sunday so I wouldnt be rushing around that morning. Sunday I was a good girl and got up and started my 10 mile run, and at about the 1 and a half mile point, something in my left hip popped. As soon as it happened, my knee started hurting really bad, so I'm sure it was my IT band. Its been giving me problems for a while, but stretching and massage has kept it pretty much in check. I tried to keep running a bit, but with the popping in my hip and the pain in my knee, I was afraid I would mess something up if I kept going. So I walked back home, and stretched it out on the foam roller for a while. It's doing better today, so we'll see how it does on my 4 mile run tonight.



And on a non-training related note, I took my dog Penny to the orthopedic vet specialist this morning for a consult on her knee and to schedule surgery. Poor thing has more knee and hip problems than I do! Not really that way I wanted to spend $1500, but I just cant look at that crazy little face and let her keep gimping around!

Ok, here we go! I'm sitting at 234 days until IMFL, and feeling pretty good about it today. I go back and forth; some days I feel like vomiting when I think about it, and some days I feel like I could go out and do it tomorrow. I'm doing my first full marathon in Lincoln, NE in May, so right now I'm focusing on my run training. Saturday was my longest run to date, 16 miles. I'm just now getting over a sinus infection, so I havent been doing a lot of running and was worried that I wouldn't be able to make it the entire 16 miles. I run with the Runners Edge training group, and there was another girl in my pace group going 16 miles, so we were able to talk each other through it. I was so proud of myself for sticking it out! Was a little sore, but an ice bath (I could only stand it for a minute and a half) and a weekend of rest did the trick. I've been having a problem with my IT band, and my feet have started to blister pretty bad, so I finally made myself go buy some new running shoes yesterday. Hopefully that helps out!