Sunday, November 25, 2012

Quick Update

It's been a busy week, so just a quick update as we hurtle towards marathon day.

I did as I was told & didn't run or otherwise exert myself over the weekend. Most of the time that's enough to take care of sore shin splints, but these guys continued to give me trouble, even walking, all weekend. There was some improvement, though, so I attempted an easy 20 minute jog on Monday as instructed. By then, the left side felt almost normal, but the right side was still in a lot of pain and I was quite happy to be done when my 20 minutes were up.

On Tuesday my assignment was 40 minutes. I wasn't feeling super-confident about this, but I decided that I'd give it a shot, and worst case, I could always stop after 20 or 30. I made it all the way through and with noticeably less pain than Monday, though I still would have described things as a bit touch-and-go.

Wednesday morning we flew out to Spokane, and because I am just that lucky/coordinated, I managed to roll my right ankle walking to the BART station and spent much of the rest of the day half-limping. It was a good thing I hadn't planned on running over Thanksgiving, because if there had been any chance of it before, there was absolutely *no* way it was happening now.

You know what's good for messed-up joints, though? FEASTING.

And there has been a lot of excellent feasting.

Thankfully, after a couple of days, it's just kind of sore and I can walk on it normally with no trouble. The shin splints seem more or less healed, but I'm reserving judgment until I have a chance to run on them on Tuesday.

This is the part where I wish I had a stronger background in biology & kinesiology & all that. On November 13, I felt like I was ready to crush this race. By the time I'm next able to get a run in, two weeks will have passed during which I've run a grand total of 12.6 miles. Yes, my lower legs will be healthy and rested, but I don't have much sense of how long "peak" marathon shape cardiovascular-wise holds up with basically no running or what the real purpose of these last race week workouts will be.

I've been distracting myself from these thoughts by looking at the weather report. A couple of days ago, the Dec. 2 forecast was 40 degrees in the morning with a 50% chance of thunderstorms. I like today's better:

Yep; I vote we just hold onto that one for the next week.

8 comments:

  1. Glad to hear you're on the mend. I think you're in excellent shape. I mean, isn't Thanksgiving feasting a sport in itself??
    Keeping my fingers crossed about the weather!

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  2. Two and a half weeks before fitness begins to deteriorate... Begins. So I think you are good to go :). And what I think is al that matters ;-). Seriously though, I think you'll be excellently tapered. Any chance you could get on an elliptical or a bike just to "wake" your legs up this week? If you're able to run I do believe you'll destroy your time from last year. Wishing you the very best!

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    1. Yay! I'm going with what you said. ;)

      I'll have some time on a treadmill Tuesday evening, then some easy miles on Thursday & Friday, probably. Hopefully that will be enough to remind them how running works.

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  3. You were in Spokane????!!!!! I wish I would have known and I wish that I would have been home. We left Wednesday early afternoon for Oregon. Hope that you had fun and I hope that you have a great week. :-)

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    1. I know! It would have been fun to meet up - the next time we are there I will definitely let you know. Hope you had a great holiday in Oregon!

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  4. Bummer about the ankle twinge, hopefully that goes away soon. Also, hope the shin splints are good. Have a good race!

    And yea, that Stanford game in Eugene was insane. So sweet hearing the stadium like a library after Stanford pulled it off. Then I feared for my life walking out lol. I thought we would win 28-24 last week, and I'm still thinking the same score this week, because my guess is that UCLA didn't show much of the playbook last week since they were guaranteed to be in the pac12 title game. Not looking forward to the massive rainstorm that is supposed to happen when the game is supposed to go on - we'll see!

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    1. Ugh...Yeah, the (likely) rain is going to suck. :P

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  5. I'm not finding it easy to work out what day it is in the US at the moment so before I'm too late...GOOD LUCK ON SUNDAY! I'm so excited for you, you're going to rock it!! Can't wait to read your recap...please do it quickly ;)

    xxx

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