Distance: 20 kilometers (12.42 miles)
Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Comments: Strange week. Not the most auspicious for preparing for my first 10K in years but I guess I can't be picky. It would be a bit naive to expect my 37-year-old body to respond to race training like it did two decades ago.
I didn't complete a single workout I planned on when I set out on my individual runs but, looking back at the week in retrospect, I probably trained harder than I should have - particularly in light of my illness last week. I have felt pretty sore the last two days and have slept inordinately hard at night. That's not what I need to be doing before a race.
Injury wise there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that I have developed a real blister issue on my left foot. I will be going into this race with two toes rubbed raw and in a spot where the band-aids tend to come off after about 20 minutes of running. The logical option, tape it better, has led to other spots being affected.
The better news is that my knee has not been a problem at all. No real aches or stiffness either during the runs or afterward. I have even played around with some range-of-motion exercises searching for the "hot spots" but have come up empty. Again, I am not about to declare this thing "solved" but it is the best progress I have made in years.
So now I just wait and take it easy until the race itself. I already have a bit of pre-race jitters and that's not helping my anxiety about my blisters and my conditioning. But there is nothing left but to see the thing through now...