5 days, 18 hours

....Until the first tri of the season! I'm so excited that Heritage Park is this weekend, I can barely stand it. Michele, Courtney and I went out there on Saturday to ride, but I ended up only doing one loop of the bike course because I was doing the Crawl for Cancer that afternoon and needed to go get my drink on. But Sunday Monica and I went out and rode the bike course 3 times, which is how many times we'll have to do it for the race. Piece of cake! Maybe a mile of the course is on Pflumm and it has a couple of rollers, but inside the park it is all downhill and I can just FLY! It was so fun trying to get my max speed higher each loop I did. Then we walked the run course so that Monica could get an idea of how long it will be. This will be her first tri, so I'm excited to see her finish it.


It's a little nerve wracking though, because once the tri season starts, it isnt over until Florida! Yikes! It's still almost 6 months away, but I know it's going to go by so fast. I'll be standing on the beach before I know it. Now that the marathon is over, I'm not worried about the run portion. I know i can run and walk 26.2 miles. I'm still nervous about the bike and swim portions because I've never swam 2.4 miles or biked 112. I know I CAN do it, it's just going to be a matter of actually DOING it. We'll need to find some good flat roads to train on this summer.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my bike? :) And check out my Smith sunglasses. They are one of our sponsors this year, so we got a fat discount. I love em, they are so comfortable and light, and they actually stay in place without sliding down my face when I get sweaty.

Crisis averted?

So, the weather on Saturday was cold and sleeting, so I decided to skip the Runners Edge and run on Sunday since it was supposed to be sunny and in the 60’s. The joys of living in Kansas! I only had 10 miles to do, which isn’t a big deal to do on my own. I stretched out my IT bands really well with the foam roller and set out on my run. I was feeling really good, no knee or hip pain, the “heat” wasn’t bothering me, it was just a comfortable run. Then about half-way into it, my right foot started hurting suddenly. I didn’t do anything to cause it, so I figured maybe it was just cramping up and I stopped to stretch it. The pain was on the outside of my foot, kind of below and in front of the knobby ankle bone. I was able to run another mile or so before it just go too painful and I had to walk. Every time I put pressure on my foot, it shot pain through my whole foot and up my ankle. Not good! So I hobbled back home and iced it right away. I was so frustrated! I had gotten the blister problem under control, I had the IT band issue under control, and now this. It hurt for the rest of the day, and was still pretty painful on Monday. I did some reading on the internet, and I’m about 95% certain that it’s a stress fracture. Since there is really nothing to be done for that except ice and rest, I decided to do that for the rest of the week, and if it’s still bothering me next week I’ll go to the doctor then. It was feeling a lot better yesterday, and today there is no pain. I’m continuing to ice it every night, and no running or riding all week. Saturday I have a 12 mile run planned, so we’ll see how it does then. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will be fine!!
I’m confident that I am wearing the right shoes, I had the guys at Garry Gribbles fit me and they feel good. So I don’t think that is the issue. I guess all this pounding on the pavement can’t be good for your feet regardless, so I’m sure that’s the cause. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen during my IM training! I feel OK taking a week of right now because my running base is there, and I’m in my taper anyway.

Oh yeah, I rocked 20 miles!

Ok, so I got my 20 miles in on Saturday!! Being that my 18 mile run 2 weeks ago had not gone well, and I hadn’t run all week due to night meetings for work, I was a little nervous. Not to mention we lost our spring weather and it was in the 30’s and VERY windy for our start! But I made my self stay positive and tried not to think about how long 20 miles really is. One nice thing about starting our runs at 6:30 am is that we get to see the sunrise, so that was a nice way to start off the run. We were in residential neighborhoods for most of the first 5 miles, then we went through Ironwoods Park for about a mile and a half, before getting back into more neighborhoods. The 20 mile turn around point was at about 135th & Roe…..not too far from our starting point at 135th & Metcalf. It was a little tempting to just take 135th back over to where my car was :) But I knew I needed to stick it out. I was feeling really good up to about mile 13, and then my IT band started bugging me. My left side has been giving me problems, and this time it was my right side. Go figure! I knew that last time I had really done myself in with the negative thinking, so I just focused on staying positive. As cheesy as it is, I really love motivational quotes, so I kept a few of my favorites going through my head to drown out the discomfort in my hip and knee. And that’s all it was, discomfort, not pain.

A little before the turn around point, the two girls I was running with ended up getting ahead of me, so I was running by myself, and with no music. I knew I needed to keep my own pace, so I didn’t mind letting them go. By the time I got back to Ironwoods Park, I was glad to find a port-a-john because I’d been making good use of the Gatorade at the aid stations. As I got back into the neighborhoods, I caught up with another girl who was doing 20 miles, and we finished out the last few miles together. We were both pretty beat by that point, but keeping up a conversation really helps the miles go by faster. It took me 4:25 to finish the whole thing, which is a little over a minute/mile slower than my goal pace. But, I’ve gotta figure in the time I spent at the aid stations, and my pee stop. My second half was only about 5 minutes slower than my first, so I didn’t slow down TOO much. AND, the blistering on my feet was minimal! No more huge pinky toe blisters! I was pretty darn sore after that run, but I’m definitely feeling a lot more confident for Lincoln. 20 miles will be at the turn around point on the out and back portion of the marathon course, and I know I can always make it back to the start after I turn around. I don’t even think being DFL would bother me, I’ll just be happy to finish!

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!

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!