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.