Keeping My Fingers Crossed

WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE CONTENT

It's getting perilously close to Goofy showtime. While everyone else is enjoying their holidays by schmoozing, shopping and sleeping--me? I've been running. My legs, or more specifically, my left leg was majorly fucked up after Sunday's run--the calf has been in knots and there's been some weird tightness behind my knee--so I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to knock out today's run.

On Monday I really worked on my legs--I used all of my self-torture devices (after all, I am a masochist at heart) to do all sorts of things to them, including kneading, rolling on hard objects, digging with my thumbs, digging with pointy objects and actual stretching. Things felt OK yesterday before I got on my bike, but biking isn't exactly gentle on one's calves (especially since I pushed the envelope a bit by increasing my time spent at FT watts by 15', ya think that might have been dumb?), and afterwards things felt pretty well fucked up again.

But no worries, I worked on myself, emphasizing my calves, last night, honing in on what I thought might be culprit muscles--popliteal (behind the knee rotational thing) and plantaris. When I woke up this morning, things felt better, at least it felt like I was back where I was before I got on my bike on Tuesday. But for safety's sake, I decided to work on things a bit before I headed off to run.

I spent 2 hours on the treadmill, and I think because of my acute awareness of potential issues, I kept feeling various things telling me maybe I should stop. But the funny thing was that the faster I ran, the better I felt. I think that I have truly spent too much time on the treadmill. Oh well, I needed to get the run done. After 2 hours, I knew I could just stop, but I'd planned for 2:15 and thought I could complete it. So I ventured to the indoor track.

Wow! As soon as I began running NOT ON THE FUCKING TREADMILL, I felt great! Although my HRM stopped picking up for some reason (I wore the HRM today just to see where my HR was during the run--more on that later). I felt good enough to gently ask several walkers to move to the outside lanes of the track so's I could get my run on. I returned to the room with the treadmills and stretched about :15 on the mats. Boy, did that feel good!

I ran a few easy laps and then headed to the locker room to change for a swim. My swim plan was for 1500 yards minimum; more if I could stand it. I got in, and it felt great to swim! Probably because I hardly swam last week, and probably also because I took the day off from work so there was no concern about needing to get home quickly. I decided to do my drill workout, and everything felt just great. But I ran out of Gatorade, so I threw my bottle to the guard, asking him to fill it with water, since I needed some hydration.

I ended up doing 2300 yards, took a nice shower, got home, slammed some Endurox R4 and calculated how much I had run. 15.07 miles in 2:15, for 8:57/mile pace! I have never done that! My Boston Qualifying pace is 9:21/mile, for a marathon time of 4:05, and I'm beginning to think I can get it done, even with a 1/2 marathon the day before. My HR at that pace is about 118, which is 73% of my maximum HR. This is why I'm keeping my fingers crossed. In the last 8 days I've run 55 miles, today I ran faster for 2:15 than I did 10 days ago, and my HR is checking in at a nice low number! I spoke with my coach yesterday to let him know that I had decided I wanted to go for the marathon PR at Goofy, and we talked about what I should do in the 1/2. I will be walking a lot--my objective is to do a 2:30 (really, REALLY slow for me) 1/2 marathon on Saturday, ice up my legs, stretch, and hopefully cruise through a nice 4:05 marathon on Sunday.

After I ate lunch, I had a nice 1.5 hour massage, and I feel GREAAAAAAAAT! Well, much better than after my 16.5 mile run on Sunday. And I think my legs will come around. No running or biking tomorrow--just a nice swim.

I'm ready for Goofy now, all I need to do is stay healthy and we shall see!