A little bit of Ugh and thinking ahead.

So, I'm sitting here wallowing in something resembling self pity.

I want to get out running, but I don't want to risk re-injuring my foot.  It still hurts when I walk around.  It's getting better.  I can can curl my toes back with a minimum of pain in the top of the foot, but there's still pain.  It also seems slightly swollen too.  Frustrating.

I never did get an xray on my foot, but based on the opinion of two doctor friends, I most likely cracked my 3rd metatarsal.  They also opined that there isn't a great deal you can do for an injury like that.  Stabilize it as best you can and try hard not to do anything that makes it hurt.  A walking boot might have helped initially, but for reasons long and complicated I'm not a huge fan of those things.

I would say I'll wait until I'm pain free before I start running again, but one thing I've acknowledged during my 41st trip around the sun is that there is rarely a day where I'm truly pain free.  Something always aches.  That is the way of things.  If I don't have pain I can directly associate with the Blues Cruise injury, I'll try get out and run a few easy miles next Tuesday.  The way things are going, I think that's a reasonable expectation.

Looking ahead, I've decided that I'm going to register for the Leadville 100 the minute registration opens.  I wouldn't be surprised if this year their slots fill very quickly.  My friend from the Steamboat 50 suggested I flagellate with a different 100.  One which is more scenic and less commercial.  Under normal access circumstances I would absolutely agree with him, but given that I live in a location where the constellations are all screwy I need to choose a race which has friends and family close by.


Anyway, my first steps in preparation for the Leadville 100 will involve an attempt to get faster.  I'm going to focus my first 26 weeks of training for Leadville on getting faster over the 10K and Marathon distances.  Once I've got a "speed" base established, I'll work on climbing strength and long distances with a hope of logging at least 4, 100 mile weeks in the time leading up to Leadville 2012.

When I started this blog, I had no intention of ever running 100 miles, but for some reason I chose a background image I took while doing a training run for the Steamboat 50.  The photograph was taken on the summit ridge of Mount Massive and off in the distance is Leadville, Colorado.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you soon Colorado.
J

Quick note re: Changing Plans

So, Irene came and went and left my wonderful home state a wreck.  Couple with that a real jones to get home and I have decided to travel north at the end of September.  That makes a big change to the schedule and asks a pretty serious question.

• No marathon PR attempt in November.
• What do I do with all of this base?

Turns out a very good, very old friend of mine is running (his second) ultra marathon on October 2nd.  I'm going to be jumping in with him, the Blues Cruise 50K.  Here's a link to the website, which is quite a bit out of date.

I don't have many expectations as far as the race itself is concerned, but I'll lay out a couple of goals.

1. Go under 5 hours.
2. Smile.
3. (Stretch) 4.5 hours.

I think all 3 are attainable, but am confident in only #2.  We'll see.  Should be fun.  I'll also be running this race in my five fingers.  I had wanted to run the marathon in November in them, but this'll have to do.
Thanks for reading and be sure you always have a stretch.
Jay

Schedule juggling.

I've got a complete rant on the inefficiency of government agencies, but that's not really what I want to write about.  In short, I'm still in the process of getting my resident visa here.  Last week I went to pick up my passport with the sticker which says:  Welcome for 1 year, only to find out that one of the pieces of paper they require for the visa was missing a signature.  I waited in a line (and then told to sit) for over 2 hours for that 1 piece of information.

Yesterday, I went and waited in the same line again.  This time with the offending paper appropriately adorned.  Again I was told to wait some more while they went to pull my file.  In total I've waited more than 4 hours in this one line.  

The thing that irks me:  there's one line servicing "outsiders", and there's a second line for Bolivians.  I have only seen 4 people in the "Bolivian" line in total.  Presumably it wouldn't be too hard to cross train the person who services Bolivians to help the person who services outsiders, no?  I suppose irk isn't strong enough...

I get to wait in that line again next week.  Sweet!

Anyway, because of this life requirement, my usual Friday recovery run is going to be yesterday's scheduled workout:  5x9 minute Z4 Cruise Intervals.  It'll be interesting to see how that goes.  I think the wind will lay off today and after Wednesday's fast workout, I'm kind of excited.

As far as recovery workouts go, I did some very light jogging yesterday and spent a couple hours mowing the back side of the house and then raking up the leaves.  That counts right?  My schedule will say 45 mintues in Z1 for Thursday.

Next week will also be weird.  I'm going to be in Cuevas until Wednesday.  I'll be spending a bunch of time in a car on Wednesday too.  Monday's recovery workout will wait until Wednesday and my usual Tuesday and Wednesday workouts will get done on Monday and Tuesday - modified to account for the hilly terrain.

First run in 3 weeks.

I've had a brutal couple of weeks trying to get my wheels on. I've been thinking about running every day, but the final spur never quite arrived.

Part of the problem is that I haven't had a goal for several months.  The last two Septembers, I've had motivation in the form of Imogene.  I knew I'd be running Imogene in 2009 in September of 2008. I knew I'd be running Imogene in 2010 somewhere in the middle of mile 6 of Imogene in 2009.  I had Imogene on my calendar, for the remainder of 2010, but somewhere in February that turned into wishful thinking.  It's back on the schedule for 2012, but this year - nope.

What finally got me out the gate today?  I believe I've got a race to train for.

• Round trips from Santa Cruz to Miami aren't too unreasonable.  So this past Sunday, I was looking for a marathon in Florida to get something on the schedule.  
• Pensacola to the rescue.  November 13.  
• A perfect 23 week training cycle too, 3 months of base training, 2 months to build intensity, 2 weeks to peak, and 1 week to race.  
• I'm going to try to shatter my "PR".  

I ran the Steamboat Marathon in 3:33.06.  That race is run at elevation and is more often downhill than up, but there is quite the lump at mile 23 which absolutely killed me.  It took 5 (or more) minutes out of my time had the road merely stayed flat.

Since I've been in Bolivia, a litany of things have resulted in my dropping a very large chunk of my gut.  I think I have lost 30 lbs relative to what I weighed when I ran Steamboat.  Unfortunately I don't have a scale so that's just a guess at this point.  With the weight loss, good preparation and me going down instead of up to race, I think I can take 20+ minutes out of my time.  Can I go under 3 hours?  There's a question to monitor...

Anyway today was the first day of my training program.  Since I haven't run in weeks I decided to peg the speedometer at 8:30 and not pay attention to my HR.  I did wear my monitor and saw 198 BPM at one point but with 3 weeks off that's really not surprising.  I ran for 45 minutes and averaged 8:34/mile total distance?  You do the math, I don't want to turn on my Garmin.  Next week I'll start being a slave to it again and in 2 more weeks I'll check the number I'm using to estimate my lactate threshold.

Anyway, I'll soon have a financial incentive to head out the door every day.  That's a powerful motivator.
Thanks for reading.
J