Cooling down the creaky joints

I hate to say it, but I'm getting old. That point is being proven by my knees, which are starting to get sore after my long runs on the weekend. There's no pain; just soreness. Considering my next two long runs are 12 and 14 miles before I get a stepback week and have to go "only" 7 miles, I guess I need to do something about it.

I'm regularly taking a glucosamine and chondroitin supplement for my joints in addition to the multi-vitamin I take. I can't prove it, but I think it helps. Maybe it's just a placebo effect. That'd be good enough for me though.

Now I think I'm going to start adding ice therapy after my long runs to hopefully stave off some soreness. I don't think I'm logging enough miles for it really, but every body is different, so maybe running 25 miles a week for me is like running 100 miles for an elite runner. And many of them incorporate ice therapy in their post-running workout routines so who's to say it's not right for me?

Anyway, it's an easy 6 miles today, which I'll do on a treadmill and without a Breathe Right strip.

Now I'm off to check out ice therapy technology (i.e., bags of ice and towels to wrap them in).

Form fitted 5K

A while back I registered for a 5K race only because it was being held in my zip code. I liked the idea of being able to pretty much walk from my house to the start line. But then I realized that this race was going to occur toward the end of my half marathon training for Boston's Run to Remember, so I was a little concerned it was going to throw my training off.

It turns out that the day of the race, tomorrow, I'm scheduled for a 3 mile "pace" run. A 5K race is 3.1 miles. So it works out perfectly! It's like I was destined to run this race this weekend.

A 3 mile "pace" ("pace" being my half marathon race pace) run works out to my running at about 8:50 min/mile, but my 5K race pace is about 7:30 min/mile, so that'll be off. There's just no way I can run a race and not try my best. It's a hilly course, and I'm still recovering from some foot issues, so I'm not really expecting (or trying) to set a personal 5K best, but I'm too competitive to back off and run the 5K about 3 minutes slower than I know I can. Plus, since the course is hilly I want it to be over as quickly as possible.

After tomorrow's 3 miles I have 12 miles on Sunday, which marks the beginning of the end of training for my next (and last for the time being) half marathon. Since I've had some foot health issues the last couple of weeks I'm a little concerned about the half. But even with the pain I've put in all the miles (except for missing about 8-9 miles worth of runs over a couple days) so we'll see how it goes. I'm running this half for fun anyway.

And that's the weirdest thought of all. I never believed that at 38 years old I'd be running 13.1 miles for fun. Or that I'd travel to do it. Runners are truly sick in the head.

Road running recap with an observation

Ok, so my next post isn't about how much my foot hurts. Whew.

But the first half mile of my 5 miles yesterday had me concerned. A little pain shot through my foot where I'd been experiencing problems over the past week right at the beginning of the run and I really thought I aggravated something. But it went away after a little while and the rest of my run felt fine. I even ran it in my usual "easy" pace window, with an 8:28 min/mile pace over the five miles.

There's a funny thing I've noticed since the weather has warmed up some and young ladies are out running (only hardcore morons run outside during the winter when it's 14 degrees). Generally when you pass by another runner, either a guy or an older lady, you wave or say hi or something like that. You're both in the same game and you both know it, so you acknolwedge it. The younger ladies, however, will not acknowledge others at all. They will run across the street, pretend to fiddle with their iPods, anything to not acknowledge they're not the only ones out running on the road. I'm not sure why, but I find that amusing. Wait. Maybe it's me. Maybe I scare the girls away. Huh. That'd suck if that's the case.

Anyway, today is 10X400 meter sprints as my last speed workout before my next half marathon. I'll do that on a treadmill because I don't have time to hit a real track somewhere today. Workouts like the one on tap for today hurt.

Finally, feet feeling fantastic-ish

For the first time in nearly a week I am not leaning on ibuprofen or a prescription anti-inflammatory to get me through the day or night. I've made it 24 hours without them and I feel 95% great. I still don't know what's wrong with my foot, but maybe it was just a strain or something relatively minor.

So today I'm going to run my prescribed 5 miles and see how it goes. This is supposed to be an "easy" run, which I usually run at about a 8:15-8:30 minutes per mile pace, but I might take it a little easier than that depending on how my foot feels. And if there's no further problems I'll do my speed work tomorrow, which is never all that much fun even if it's necessary.

I'm hopeful this injury "crisis" is over. So my next post will probably be about how much worse my foot feels. Ha.

12 days to my next half marathon, and counting.

Eleven miles to nowhere

Saturday night I was laying in bed anticipating my 11 mile run on tap for yesterday and guessing I wasn't going to be able to do it. My foot was hurting pretty badly and I couldn't get to sleep. After popping some Vitamin I and staying up way too late watching Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer on HBO, I finally conked out. I believe it was around 12:30am by then. I'd hope to be out on the road by 7:00am at the latest for the run but didn't think I'd make it out at any time.

I woke up at 6:20am. It's funny how my body knows when to wake up when it comes to running. If I would have had to get up for work I probably would have slept another two hours. My foot felt much better when I woke up, although I was a little gimpy. I figured since I could walk I could attempt to run. For the first time I thought about taking my phone with me in case I had to stop. I usually just wear a RoadID bracelet that has my vital info on it in case I drop dead on the side of the road or in case I'm run over by a car. I feel that's enough. In the end I decided to forgo the phone because I didn't want having it on me influencing me in cutting the run short or fooling myself into believing I was in too much pain to continue. If worse came to worse I felt I could flag down a car to call home for me.

The first three miles of my run were rough. My foot and ankle were stiff and causing me some discomfort. And I was compensating by cheating to the outside of my foot while I ran. That caused some pretty nice blistering before the run was over. But as the distance increased I was feeling better and better and by the end of the run I felt pretty good. I never couldn't tell there was soreness, but it got to the point where it was no worse than any other ache or pain you might feel by running over 10 miles.

Even though I completed the run I thought it was slow compared to when I ran the same route a few weeks ago leading up to the Frederick Half Marathon. Looking at the data on my Forerunner, however, I discovered that I was only 2 seconds per mile slower yesterday than I was last time when I felt perfect physically. That was a nice surprise.

The foot kind of hurt the rest of the day, and there was the blistering to contend with, but overall I don't believe running 11 miles yesterday was extra detrimental to my foot's health. And today it feels the best it has in 4 or 5 days.

Today is a non-running day, so I'll take it easy at the gym and see how it goes. I'm on tap for 5 miles tomorrow, but I might take an extra day off and push the 5-miler back to Wednesday and just skip the speed work I have planned for that day. I'm worried about being conditioned to finish my half marathon in a couple weeks. I'm not too worried about setting any records, which is what the speed work is designed to help me do.

For all the foot issues I'm having right now, I'm pretty excited for this next half marathon. It should be a good one.

Favoring a foot

While there might not be anything broken in my foot, something is just not right and I should probably heed my doctor's advice and not run on it for a while. Of course, I have a pre-paid trip to Boston on the horizon for a half marathon that I've already paid for too, so not running is not in the cards until at least after Memorial Day weekend. I can suffer through until then if there's no improvement.

It's after the half marathon in Boston where decisions will have to be made. Against my better judgment, I'm leaning toward actually running a full 26.2 in Baltimore in October. The problem is that if I do that I'll have to start training for it on June 8. That leaves two weeks after the half marathon in Boston for my foot to heal completely. Assuming that I run the risk of damaging it further by not taking it easy now, I don't know if I'm going to be ready to begin a full marathon training program by the second week in June. Oh, well. If worse comes to worse and I have to forgo a full marathon in lieu of a half in Baltimore (which will only take 12 weeks to train for, giving me 8 weeks to heal after Boston if I need it) I guess I'll just have to give a full marathon a go some other time.

As for training, I ran 3 miles Thursday and 5 today, both on treadmills. With my foot still hurting I just want to log the miles and not worry about hills and elevations and grades and such. Tomorrow I'm on tap for 11 which I will run outdoors. I think 7 miles is my limit for the treadmill without going batty. It will also be a good indicator of whether I'm asking too much of my foot right now. But the truth is I felt better after my 5 miles today so we'll see how it goes.

Good news on the injury front

I went to get an x-ray taken today to see if a stress fracture would show up in my foot. This morning I was doubtful that was the case because an anti-inflammatory and a dose of Vitamin I (ibuprofen) had me feeling about 90% better.

It turns out that I do not have a stress fracture, but calcified spurs in my foot. I'm not sure how that's treated, but from my own research it seems that as long as there's no inflammation there shouldn't be much problem. For a while, at least.

Since I was feeling good, and since I was buoyed by the fact that I don't have a stress fracture in my foot, I celebrated the news by running a 5K program on a treadmill at the gym after leaving the radiology place (it was kind of rainy out so I didn't want to run outside). I took it easy because I haven't run since my half marathon on Sunday, but that just meant I didn't run on an incline. I was able to maintain my usual treadmill speed for the 5K distance.

It felt really good to run. I don't think I've taken more than two days off of running for the past year. Today was day four of not running.

Tomorrow I'll take my usual Friday rest day and get back at it on Saturday with a 5 miler. Then 11 miles on Sunday and back on track until my next half marathon in Boston on May 25.

It's nice to know none of my plans are going to be derailed by injury right now.

Personalized race summaries and injuries

I got this pretty cool e-mail regarding my participation in the Frederick half marathon last weekend:

Congratulations on finishing the 6th Annual Frederick Running Festival on May 04, 2008. For your records, the weather at start time was Sunny, low 51 high 69 degrees F, wind N/NW 10-20 mph.

There were 141 finishers in the Male 35 to 39 age group and 1842 finishers in the 1/2 Marathon Division.

Your overall finish place was 553, your age group finish place was 71 and your gender finish place was 354. Your time was 1:56:36.55 giving you an overall pace of 8:54 per mile.

This was only my second half, so I don't know if summaries like this are normal, but I didn't get anything like this after my last half. I was shooting for an 8:57 per mile overall pace in this race so I was pleased to get confirmation that I beat that. Had I been familiar with the course, however, I would have shot for somewhere between 8:45 and 8:50 per mile. I think I can run this race faster.

In other news, I'm beginning to think I have a stress fracture in my foot. There has been off and on pain on the top of my right foot over the last several weeks but it usually went away either as I ran or after a day or two. This time the pain has persisted, and it's gotten worse as time's gone by. I haven't even done any running since Sunday, so that couldn't have been aggravating it. I'm wavering between going to the doctor and not because a doctor can only guess whether it's a stress fracture without getting into a bunch of advanced tests and such so I don't know if it's even worth it to see him.

I hate the idea of taking time off to heal now because I have another half marathon in Boston in a couple weeks (May 25) that I'm really looking forward to. But considering that trip is pre-paid and non-refundable I'll be completing that half on crutches if I have to. But the truth is that I was pretty stoked after my last half and want to keep up the momentum.

Oh, well. Injuries happen and you deal with them, I guess.