UGH UGH AND MORE UGH!

Well, I was doing well training for a half. I was base-building really, but trying to increase my long run miles and just run them slowly. I figured my half in October would be more of a training run for me than a "race". However, I've been hobbled now for three weeks. I'm going to shoot for doing the Big House Big Heart 5k in Ann Arbor on the 30th of this month, but beyond that I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I know BHBH won't be a PR for me.

I have been fighting peroneal tendonitis. Anyone who has had tendonitis knows it takes a long time to heal. And my doc gave me the negative on running for at least 3 weeks. That will be up this weekend. I've had some time to reflect during the last 2 of those 3 weeks and I've realized that this is just a short blip. Yeah, maybe I just started and so to me it feels like the end of the world, but any loss I endure right now will be regained once my ankle is healthy. I have to look at it as part of the game and realize that now when I start running again and use better form, I will hopefully be able to avoid injury again.

So, I've come up with a list of goals for the end of 2007 and the whole of 2008. And here they are:

1: drop another 20 pounds
2: eat more cleanly
3: work on cross-training and general fitness
3: build up to 25-30 miles per week safely and properly
4: Detroit Half Marathon NEXT year

Oh, to keep myself from going absolutely insane I volunteered my time at the Dances with Dirt in Hell, MI this past Saturday. AWESOME time! It was amazing watching the 50k/50 milers come across the finish line. And the relay teams for the 100K relay had a blast and it was great watching them too. I got to do the data entry for the team relay and also hand out some prizes to the 50k/50m people. And at the beginning direct traffic and cheer on the runners. It was an absolutely fun time and I'm going to volunteer again next year unless I get the guts to actually do part of the relay with a team. Check it out at http://www.danceswithdirt.com!

Now, I'm off to stretch the ankle...HEAL DAMMIT! :)

Safe for now...

Turns out clinicals will be Thursday/Friday either mornings or afternoons every other week. I can handle this. I'd prefer afternoons and I signed my form as such, but there's no guarantee. However, this pretty much means I'm not doing the Tower of Terror race on 10/27. Not really happy about that.

Looking at it from a different perspective, at least right now I'm training and building a good base. I plan on walking part of the Detroit half marathon, right off the bat I'll say it. It's more important for me to do base training right now than jump into a training plan for a half. So I'm going to treat that day like any other day on my plan, do my scheduled plan run, and then walk the rest..or some combination of such. If I feel I can run the whole thing I will, but I'm not going to push it.

I've learned a lot these past couple months. One is that I'm burned out beyond all belief on school. I've slipped from a 4.0 student to a 3.0 this past semester. But I didn't care..it's not going to bring down my overall average enough to make a difference. Two is that although it was a great experience doing the marathon, the euphoria during training (and that damn taper madness) made me sign up for races that I should have known I wouldn't really be ready for. I could say that my marathon training got me in good enough shape that I shouldn't start my plan where I am right now, but my endurance was never really good. I really want to run for the rest of my life..and to do that I need to learn proper form and do things the right way. So I'm kinda pretending that I'm starting from scratch. I started on the 3rd month of the Daniels white plan, since I did at least feel I had enough endurance to do so. And so far this week I have been doing really well. I was supposed to do a planned run tomorrow, but I'm switching my Friday and Saturday workouts so that I can do the running on Saturday with TP (Team Playmakers). So tomorrow I'm just doing some powerwalking for 30 minutes as soon as I'm awake. Then Saturday it's:

5 minutes walking
20 minutes running at easy pace (which I learned is about 13-14 min/miles to keep me below 79% MHR)
5 minutes walking
10 minutes running at easy pac
5 minutes walking

Once I get through 4 weeks of this, then I'll be running 30 minutes straight. I can do so now, actually, and probably could have started on Level IV of the plan, but I really feel where I'm starting is a good place to get my endurance to optimal levels. By January for the Disney half, I should at least be able to run 75% of it if not more. I'm not sure that I'm going to do a full training plan..but from reading the book and estimating time, I should be able to run a lot of it at an easy pace and still finish. I'm going to save PRs and pushing it for after January. I could start an actual half-marathon training plan after January and be ready for the Flying Pig in Cincinnati in May. :)

So enough of me blabbing. My birthday's in 3 days..and I have to go rest my liver for my friend's bonfire tomorrow night. :-D

Yeah yeah...

Okay, so it's been a month almost since I posted. Not like anyone's reading this anyway. :)

Been a hectic month. School is over this week and I'll have a life again for about 28 days and then it's back to the last 2 semesters. Hopefully. It's entirely possible that the schedule will be impossible for me to handle with my job if it turns out the way I've heard it will. And I can't live without the job, so school will have to be the one that bites it if the schedules don't mesh. Anyway, not going to fret about that right now. I'll know more tomorrow.

Starting a new training plan. I'm still going to run in Detroit but I'm going to be very careful about it and be slow and not really do it as anything competitive. It's not like I have a snowball's chance in hell of winning anything...so I'm just going to go and have fun. :) I've changed my mind about doing the Capital City River Run half marathon on 9/30 and instead I'm going to do the Big House Big Heart 5k in Ann Arbor. Much more fun, and I joined a team that is going to do either 10 miles or another 3.1 miles before the actual race so you can get in a half marathon or 10k for the day. I'll be wearing Maize and Blue of course!

I did the Ele's Place 5K on 7/22. Took over 3 minutes off my previous time. My new PR is now 35:55 for a 5K. The reason I'm starting a new plan is because I know that running is something I want to do for life. And I don't feel that I've been making any gains in the last month..mainly because I think I'm pushing my bod too hard for what it's ready for right now. So, I bought Jack Daniel's book and I'm following the White plan starting in the Level III. I could probably start in the Red Level but I've been noticing that my HR is above where it really should be for optimal "easy" training runs, and that's something I really want to improve. If I'm constantly running in an anaerobic zone, then I'm not going to make any improvement. So I went out today and did the first day of training on the plan. Kept my HR below 80% (he states that 65-79% is where I should be during easy runs. My pace was pathetically slow but everything I read says that's what it should be when you're doing easy runs (obviously relative to one's normal pace). So I'm going to just double-fist it for a while and wear my HRM and my Garmin until I am really comfortable with where my HR is in a certain pace zone.

I'm also starting today to try and eat more healthfully. I have been pretty good, but I eat enough that I'm maintaining my weight and I'd really like to start losing. Since I've decided not to really train for the half marathon and instead treat it as more of a fun run/walk, I'm going to fuel myself just enough for my base-building and hopefully drop 10 or 15 more pounds before the end of October. I'd like to drop about 30 but I'll take whatever I can get. :)

Well, that's life in a nutshell lately. I'm off to enjoy some grilling and studying for my final peds exam. Glad this semester is almost over with! And glad that it's the last summer I'll have to give up! :D

Oh how I hate..to have to wait...

I have a mild (thank God!) case of peroneal tendonitis in my left ankle to go along with the PF in that foot. The peroneal tendon is the one that goes around the back of the lateral malleolus (ankle bone) and attaches to the side of the foot. And guess when it got aggravated? Running on the slant on Hwy 163 in San Diego. Doc said it's not bad and two weeks of no running, lots of stretching, ibuprofen and wearing my arch supports, arch strap and Strassburg sock should get rid of it, as well as ease up the PF I've been suffering from for months. I'm not too happy about not running. But he did say walking was fine, as was anything at the gym besides running on the treadmill. So I suppose I should listen to him and take it easy for a couple weeks.

It means I won't be fully ready for the local half mary, but I'll be fine for Detroit. I'm not sure about the Crim 10-miler in August. I still want to do it, but we'll have to see where I'm at at that point. Might go anyway just to enjoy the festivities. :)

So, today is a stretching/strengthening day. I'm going to go for a short walk when I get home and then stretch it out for an hour or so..maybe do some yoga. One thing he did say is that I have very stiff ankles..and that lots of stretching should help ease up those calf muscles and my achilles tendon, which should in turn help my ankles be a bit more flexible. And that, in turn, would help my running gait so I'm not slapping my foot down (which I noticed I do on the left foot). We shall see!

No running sucks!

So the last time I ran was Tuesday morning. I wanted to run on Thursday but I had a buttload of clinical paperwork to do (I'm a horrible procrastinator). Since my Friday night was taken already I knew I had to give up the Thursday trail run in order to get it done. Lesson learned. Friday morning I was going to get up but wasn't feeling so hot so figured I'd try and get it in between getting out of work and going to my NICU observation. That didn't work out either. My observation was from 7:15 pm to 10:30 pm and I had to get up at 3:45 to be ready for carpooling to A2 for clinicals. Thought maybe I'd get a run in afterwards. That didn't work out either. We got lost getting home from dropping off another student who doesn't live in Lansing and we were all so tired and slap-happy we missed the split to the highway we were supposed to take and ended up halfway to Battle Creek before I realized we weren't going the right way (I wasn't driving BTW..).

So I got home and went to a 4th of July party (yes, I know it was June 30th but they have the party the weekend before the holiday). I wasn't going to drink or stay late so I could get up this morning and go for a run with the Playmakers group. Okay, so that didn't work out either. ;)

So today I'm going to take it easy in the morning, get the remainder of homework I need to finish all out of the way and go for a run later this evening, without fail. I HAVE to or I'm going to start losing it! I did figure out though, that I can work off a 12 week training schedule for the half. If I plan on just walk/running the local half, I could wait until the end of July to start training for Detroit. I'd like to do the 10 mile Crim race in Flint in August too though..so I'm debating today about when to start my actual training plan. I tried to start on the 18th of this month, and the first week went well, but this week just wasn't meant to be..so I'm just considering it further recovery and officially I'm not going to start training until the 8th...since that's when I SHOULD have started training anyways seeing as how I've had a nagging ankle pain since San Diego.

Okay, enough rambling. I'll post something once I've actually gone for a run. ;)

And this one time, at training...

I thought it would be a good workout to go work with the local training group. It was. A grueling workout. Over trails. Lots of hills. Lots of branches. Lots of sand. Up hills. Lots of hills. Did I mention there were hills? According to Motionbased, some of these hills were a 30% grade. I made it..I ran up all the hills I could. I walked very little. I made it through at least 2.6 of the 3.4 miles straight running. And I felt it. Garmin said I was running anywhere from an 11 to a 14 minute mile. I felt like I was running 9 minute miles the whole time..I was WINDED! But wow, that's a great workout and one I want to do with them every Thursday.

There was a nice woman who I ran into at the start, and she hung out with me for her first loop of the trail. I kept telling her it would be okay if she wanted to take off and go faster, but bless her heart, she stuck with me and it really helped me to push myself a little harder than I might have otherwise. We got back to the starting point and she said her goodbyes and took off for a second loop. We had fun talking and I'll be running with her again on Sunday during the informal long run.

I was wearing my awesome John Bingham Racing shirt that I got in San Diego. The one that says..."I'm slow. I know. Get over it.". Three women were coming up behind us (presumably doing their second lap..sheesh) and started saying "Oh no you're not. No you're not." I had no idea what they were talking about and then when they passed me one of them turned around and said "You're doing fine! You're not slow!" I laughed and said thank you...and that I only bought the shirt because it was pink. ;) I like this group.

So my legs hurt now. I stretched but my lower legs hurt differently..probably because of all the uneven terrain. But it was fun and I'm totally pumped up for a short 2 miler in the morning. Then it's rest on Saturday for clinicals and off to a 7 mile long run on Sunday morning. Woohoo! It feels SO good to be back in training!

Finally a week to run!

So now that my race schedule for the year is set, I need to start training for my first half (and the one 3 weeks later). This week will have more running than I've done in the past couple weeks and I can't wait. I'm feeling good, my legs are strong, my foot isn't hurting much, and the tenderness that appeared in my ankle after the marathon usually lessens after stretching, so I'll watch it but I'm not worried about it.

Clinical rotation yesterday was exciting. We didn't have a chance to do much patient care but we got to meet a few patients. And being that it's pediatrics they're mostly babies and toddlers on our floor. :) At one point when our instructor was showing us how to do an assessment on a child, the one in the crib next to him was keeping an eye on me, and we were having a lot of fun playing peek-a-boo through the crib slats. Finally we got done with the assessment and the nurse asked us if we wanted to assess the other kid too. I jumped at the chance. The baby was such a cutie with big cheekers! ;) We played with him and assessed him and when we left the room he was quite upset about it. Luckily there was another group of students coming in to pay attention to him. :) I want to go into pediatrics or the neonatal ICU, so this experience is a lot of fun for me. Our floor deals with congenital heart defects. It's one of the only hospitals in the region that does work with these kids, so this experience is going to be absolutely great.

I do hate giving up my Saturday long runs, but I will get a small workout in climbing the stairs from the parking area to the hospital. It's 130 stairs up a steep hill. Only get it once a week but still..it's fun. :) I've decided that I'm going to put some effort into hill training, which means once clinicals are over and I can go to the Saturday group runs, I can run the cemetery route which is VERY hilly. If I do loops of that once a week I'll be in pretty good shape by the time the first half-mary rolls around.

I'm officially out of the post-marathon blues. I'm in a much better state of mind and able to concentrate a little better. My appetite still isn't 100% but I'm still considering that a blessing at this point. I've lost 4 pounds since the marathon, which was now 2 weeks ago, so I'm not doing too bad. Don't want to lose any faster than that..and I'm sure with training now I'll slow it down to a 1-lb per week loss. I'm excited about this week because we're having our TNT victory party grillout at my coach's house and it'll be fun to see my local TNT teammates and hear how their marathons went. Most of them did a race 2 weeks before we did, there were only 2 of us from the Lansing group that did San Diego.

Here's to a good week!