Monday, February 14, 2011

House full of sick and a sparse week of training

Wednesday 2/9 (3.0mi, 26min, 8:40/mi) I've been quite sick lately. Sick enough to take 4 days off work with a horrible chest cold. Both of my kids had pneumonia so I'm glad that my illness wasn't worse. I don't like taking sick days, especially when everyone else in the house is sick. I especially don't like being too sick to run for 8 days straight! On Wednesday I still had a bit of a cough and some nastiness in my chest but I felt good enough to work out so I hit the gym at work for some cardio and weights. At the end I threw in a slow 3 miles on the treadmill. I tried to numb the boredom by practicing running up on my toes. It didn't feel as hard as I remember the last few times I've tried to focus on it. Maybe I can continue the transition to forefoot running.

Thursday 2/10 (6.0mi, 54min, 9:00/mi) I forgot the Garmin so I'm guessing on the numbers. I ran over to the Bridle Trails at an easy pace. I still had crud in my lungs so it was a challenge just to get through the run. My knee bothered me almost the whole run. The knee pain scares me that I've re-torn my Meniscus or something. I'm hoping that it's just due to the new Brooks Cascadia 6 shoes that I've been running in lately. I really want to like the shoes but I have had knee pain every time I've run in them so far. Good easy run other than the knee thing.

Sunday 2/13 (12.1mi, 1h 53m, 9:24/mi) It was a busy weekend so I didn't have time for a proper long run. With my lack of running lately (<10 miles/week the last 2 weeks) I'm not quite in shape for the scheduled 20 miles either. I was able to get out for a 12mi run around Gig Harbor though. I was worried about how my knees would take it so I ran with the Garmin but set the screen to the menu rather than the data so that I wouldn't be constantly checking my pace/time/distance. I also ran in my favorite shoes, the New Balance MT101s. They're so low profile that they feel easier to run mid/forefoot in. They're far from a zero-drop shoe but they're much smaller and lighter than the Cascadias. I didn't have any knee pain on the run which was hopeful, I kept waiting for it to creep in but it never did. My knee felt tired rather than sore. The long dynamic stretching routine I did before the run probably helped quite a bit. I've been watching some videos on pre and post run routines from the Running Times podcast series for ideas.

One other nice thing about the run on Sunday was that I finally explored the trails at the corner of 70th and Warren dr. I'd run by them many times but never ventured in. Turns out that it's a nice 1KM outer loop with several trails crossing in the middle. The trails are very narrow with high bushes and many sharp turns which caught me a little bit by surprise at times. There was a little bit of climbing on each loop and I was the only one there. They aren't really wide enough for two people to pass each other. Great little find, I'm glad that I finally checked them out.

So I'm 5 weeks out from Chuckanut with very few miles in my legs. I'm going to try to ramp up with three long runs on successive weekends then an easy weekend, then the race. If I have more knee pain or my body can't take the steep increase in mileage I'll have to give up running Chuckanut and go volunteer instead. I'm very hopeful after yesterday's run but I'd still give myself about a 50:50 shot of starting the race.

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