Week Wrapup

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...

Fitness Run

Distance: 6 kilometers (3.7 miles)
Time: 30 minutes
Surface: asphalt/concrete
Weather Conditions: sunny, warm, 70s, late morning run
Location: Miraflores, Lima, Peru

Comments: Another good day running sidetracked by blisters. My goal was to put in the 45 minutes and it felt very possible running wise but at about the 25-minute mark my toe started to feel raw and I stupidly held off another five minutes before dealing with it. Now both my pinkie toe and the next one have raw spots and I have only two days until my race.

The problem is that the point of contact between them is such that it pushes a bandage off after any prolonged running. The bandages - now a band-aid held in place with a strip of medical tape - may work to cover the bad spot but they also create other points of friction as well.

So now I haven't run a decent long run in half a month prior to this race. That's got me a bit worried. And the pre-race jitters probably are only going to get worse from here on in.

Fitness Run

Distance: 4.2 kilometers (2.6 miles)
Time: 20 minutes
Surface: asphalt/concrete
Weather Conditions: sunny, warm, 70s, early afternoon run
Location: Miraflores, Lima, Peru
Secret weapon: none

Comments: The good, the bad and the ugly of runs. 

The good was I started strong, held a good pace and felt I had scads of entrgy. The bad was I got another blister from the bandages intended to protect from the prior one. The ugly was giving in at the 20 minute mark rather than go the whole 45 minutes I intended

So what happened? Well, I started great and was in the perfect mood to run. The glorious boon of a sunny fall day in Lima just added to that. But, I added a few things to my repertoire that caused problems. First was the blister taping. A single band-aid on the pinkie toe doesn't do it. But, now, it looks like the medicine tape rubs the bottom of the next toe raw. 

Next, I wore a butt pack for the first time and it needed a ton of ajusting to fit right during the run. The addition is to carry some of the stuff I will be needing as I start to get into longer runs. Working through the problems these changes bring is to be expected but it really kept me from a satisfactory run today.

And so, when I stopped to address the pain in my toe I just let the run go. Prior to that, though, I ran a strong pace for the whole way - probably 2/3 my race pace or so. Pushing that pace across a full 10 kilometers is going to be a real test of my ability at this point and, to be totally honest, right now I am more than a little bit anxious about it.

Fitness Run

Distance: 4.2 kilometers (2.6 miles)
Time: 20 minutes
Surface: asphalt/concrete
Weather Conditions: cool, cloudy, 60s, late morning run
Location: Miraflores, Lima, Peru
Secret weapon: none

Comments: Started with a good stretch and situp regimine. I felt a bit creaky after my first day back after my being ill. The minute I hit the road it was like running through molasses. I didn't feel like I had anything in my legs for the run.

Stuck with it knowing it would get better and it did but it never got good. My pace was a good bit faster than yesterday but I knew I wasn't going to go any real distance with it. I gave in after 20 minutes mostly because I am still very nervous about making myself sick again.

I plan on taking tomorrow off (I might do some gym work) then a 45 minute run at near race pace on Wednesday followed up by a recovery run the day after. We'll see how successful I am in carrying it out.

Fitness Run

Distance: 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles)
Time: 30 minutes
Surface: asphalt/concrete
Weather Conditions: cool, overcast, 60s, noon run
Location: Miraflores, Lima, Peru
Secret weapon: none

Comments: Not as bad as I feared. Although the flu has clearly left me weakened, I still got a very satisfactory run out of it. I kept my stretching and warm-up to a minimum and just went out and ran it. I just tried to keep a slightly-better-than-a-jog pace but, somewhere just past the halfway point, I fell into a nice easy rythm and just rode it the whole way.

Obviously, the true test of this run is going to come later today and tomorrow as my body decides if it is going to go with the flow or decide to be sick again. The strategy? Eat well, force fluids and sleep hard.

Week Wrapup

Distance: 10.2 kilometers (6.35 miles)
Time: 50 minutes

Comments: Hugely disappointing week but not necessarily from a running standpoint. I came down with a flu on Wednesday and didn't feel even close to human again until today. Needless to say, I wasn't about to take the scheduled long run and, instead, opted for an additional rest day to recover my strength a bit.

The meltdown of my immune sytem late in the week confirmed my concerns about it during my early week runs. While my performance was fine and the runs went well, it was clear I was dragging for some reason. This is the second time my training has been derailed by illness and it is damn frustrating.

Despite the letdown I have to admit it is not a real setback training-wise since I was looking at doing this race more to establish a baseline than anything else. My plan is to scrap my running plan and treat next week as a normal training week leading up to a 1 hour long run on Sunday.

After the disappointment of last week's illness abreviated workouts I have to reassess my plan to prepare for the 10K race next Sunday. An hope of making it a banner effort has completely evaporated and it will, instead, be a measure of what exactly do I have in the tank.

It isn't a question of "Am I strong enough to finish the thing?", because I clearly am. But rather, the more pertinant inquiry is "How will I hold up under race conditions?" It looks like this one is going to be a real baseline for my work over the next six months - which is what I intended, just not to this degree.

Anyhow, I think I am going to do an easy run today and a bit more tomorrow if I feel OK (the last thing I want is a relapse and the Lima weather is not being very cooperative). I will take a day off and do two longer runs on Wednesday and Thursday. Then I will sit tight until the race.