Holy Crap! A Race (report in 3 parts)...Pt. 1: Discovery.

Wow, so it's been a long time since I put keyboard to screen in this manner, hopefully I'm not too rusty.

First, a bit of an apology for dropping off there.  A number of things happened that made writing more than a little difficult (and perhaps too personal) so I took a break.  I don't know how much or how consistently I'll post here in the future, but having just run in my first race since 2011, I figure I probably ought to put something down.

As anyone who's read more than one entry on this blog is likely aware I like to style myself an ultrarunner.  Of course, I've run all of 2 ultramarathons, so it's probably more appropriate to call me an aspiring ultrarunner.

This year I've been hoping I'd be able to get to Colorado this coming weekend to run in Ouray and follow that up with 50 miles in Steamboat next weekend.  I've logged miles directed at Running Rabbit Running in what I thought would be good for a finish time somewhat under the 10 hour mark.

As the race dates have gotten closer though, I've realized that the airfare wasn't going to materialize and I decided to pay attention to an injury (achilles tendon) that I'd been ignoring.  So on August 16, I took the first of 10 days off.

Around that same time I gripped about my achilles on Twitter.  @RunnerMatt (fast guy from Boulder), responded that he'd had great success treating his ailing achilles using a roller.  I gave that a google and found myself a bit confused as to why I'd never encountered the treatment in my previous searches for relief.

I went to the grocery store and bought a rolling pin and went to work on my calfs.

Let's just call them tight and leave it at that (ouch)...

After a week off which involved nightly rolling pin work, I felt good enough to try out a short run.  I made it all of 100 meters from my gate before stopping, turning around, walking home and going to work with the rolling pin.  That was Friday about 2 weeks ago.

The following Sunday, Deneb, Nataly and I were at the IC Norte (a grocery store with a little mall attached) for lunch and some supplies for the house.  Recently a New Balance store opened upstairs in the "mall". Now...I prefer Brooks shoes, but NB are a decent second place and I've written at length about the MT10 on this very blog.  Love that shoe.  Anyway, since they opened I've harassed the store owner to:

1. Order shoes in size 13+, and
2. Stock some of the Minimus line.

This time when we went in there, there was a table set up on the side:

Sign up for 5k & 10k race on Sunday, Sep. 1.  

The woman who was collecting the entry fees and registering participants was on lunch and I wasn't sure how my heel would feel so I didn't leave my name on the desk, but did say I'd be back later on in the week (pending a successful test of the achilles)...

Thanks for reading, up next: 1 week of specific training.
J