End of Stage I

Six weeks down; twelve to go.

The Black Mountain trail race should have gone off this morning.  I slept in (with help of daylight savings time beginning) and so didn't make it to the park to share in the atmosphere.  As late as last night I was contemplating getting there early to see if they were taking race-day registrations, but I just decided to stick with the money savings and run a substitute trail run instead.  I feel a little bit of regret since I've run the route a few times and would have liked to have run it for an official time.  And I'm the sort that likes to stick with a plan; and having an XTerra series race fall perfectly within my training program, I feel like I probably should have run it.  But $65 is $65, and I'm glad I saved the money. 

I ran the route later in the day, recording a personal time of 1:21:30 over the 9.8 miles.  I don't know how the crowd would have affected me, but with that time I'd have come in 49th overall and 6th in the men's 45-49 division.  Looking at the top 3 times in the M44-49 and M50-54 gives me something to shoot for for next year.  If I can get my time over the course down to 1:15:00 or so, I could be a competitor.  That'd be cool.

Even though I didn't run yesterday, I didn't feel all that fresh today.  In fact, it took me a couple of miles to find my groove.  It felt very strange to be breathing hard but not have my heart rate above 140.  I couldn't help but think something wasn't quite right.  But by around 2 miles, things felt more normal as my breathing leveled out and my HR settled in around 145. 

The ankles are okay.  I'm still feeling stiffness and tenderness

right here, indicated by the arrow; but if I concentrate on my form I seem to be able to minimize it.  Massage and stretching afterwards also seems to keep the pain limited.  It's usually after I've been sitting or sleeping that I feel like it takes a little while for the tendon to loosen up and feel transparent.  Where I still have concerns is how it will respond on the long runs of 16 miles or more.  My limited experience is showing that that's where it starts to complain on the run itself.  Prior to that point, I only notice it during recovery.

I think the mileage cut back this week was a wise move, and I hope to be looking back on this week and patting myself on the back.  It's hard to do because the ego feels like the train is leaving and you're getting left at the station.  But I rationalized that I had increased my mileage to quickly and had actually gotten ahead of the train.  By knocking back 50% this week, I think I've let the train catch up and avoided incurring a nagging injury that could have impacted my training. 

I'm not out of the woods yet.  I could still be facing some nagging tendinitis caused by an aggressive ramp up in miles.  I'm still going to try to get back to my mileage plan, but I'm going to concentrate on soft-pack trails and treadmill as much as I can leading up to next weekend's long run: my first 20-miler. 

These next six weeks are going to be the key, I think, to the marathon training success.  I want to really work on my strength as well as endurance so that I can head into the final 6 weeks fine-tuning and tapering.  I've got 3 weekends planned for 20+ mile long, slow runs, interspersed with the Carlsbad 5000 and La Jolla Half Marathon events.  It should be a fun stage and confidence builder.