Posts from — February 2008

I had high hopes for my run on Thursday night and I went out looking forward to it, albeit a little tired. I am happy that my mileage is starting to increase as it starting to make me feel more comfortable that I am on the way towards putting in the distances required to run 100 miles in a single day. As usual, the one major wild card in all of this is the health of my shin or lack thereof. It is becoming increasingly painful as the days go on. It just gets fractionally worse as each day goes by, so unless there is a major increase in pain, the discomfit has to this point been manageable. Denying that I am in pain or that its affecting my running has been working. I just need to concentrate on the denial a little more each day. Kind of how I am tacking on just a little more mileage each week.

At first I thought my run would be ok. I wasn’t running with any sort of pace, but I was at least making decent progress. It is annoying to have runners passing me who in the past would have never had a chance to pass me while I was on a run, but I console myself with the fact that I am going for the distance and not the speed. I couldn’t keep up with the small group that past me, but my heart rate was ok and I was averaging around a 10 minute mile. I was ok with that. I got around the first loop in around 36 minutes, which was acceptable considering the easy pace I went out at.

My second loop was more of an adventure. I started to fatigue when I got down to the bottom of the hill and I caught myself wanting to stop and walk several times. I refused to let myself do that. I just kept saying how just one more step wouldn’t kill me and I kept on going like that for a while. I just put my head down and focused on the white lines painted in the road. This got me around ¾ around the park before I found myself forced to walk. My legs simply had no more juice in them. I would walk for a while and then try to run again, but it was painful. When I got back to the top of the park, I had 7 miles and decided to bail out on the last 2. Anymore than 7 would have just been very ugly, so I dejectedly walked out of the park and tried to do a slow trot home. The ending to the workout was upsetting, but not too surprising. There will be better days.

Tuesday night was the first snowfall of the year and I went running in it. It was my regularly scheduled Tuesday night run with my friend Larry and I don’t think either of us would have missed it for anything. It’s so much fun to be out at night during a snowstorm. The world looks different, is all quiet and has a dreamlike quality to it. I will admit that running in several inches of snow is a lot tougher that running on dry pavement, but the extra work only added to the enjoyment of the run.

I wasn’t sure whether I should do this run as my shin is really starting to bother me. The snow outside, erased any doubts though as I really wanted to run in it. The snow lightened the impacts of my footfalls and was actually a help in that respect – it made the running easier on my shin. We practically had the park to ourselves and put in a strong 9 mile effort. The ground was slippery at times and the snow slowed our pace considerably. I remarked that when we completely two loops of the park, we were seriously behind schedule. It didn’t matter though, as it was just so nice to be out in the snow.

I would say that running in the snow was the best part of my day. However, after I came in from my run, I spent some time with my son wrestling in the living room. He has been on a huge wrestling kick lately and begs me to wrestle him every time I am around. Later, when I was tucking him into bed, I asked him about school, what he did and what was his favorite part of the day. This was the fateful question. He replied that his favorite part of the day was wrestling me just a few minutes earlier. This sent a stab through my heart as I suddenly felt bad about spending the time out of the house running. But it also melted my heart to hear that the best part of my son’s day was wrestling with his dad. My son just knows the right things to say to tear me apart emotionally. I just love that boy so much. I just wish I didn’t feel as though I am sacrificing time away from my children when I go out to do my training. It feels as though I could never do too much for them and what I do is never enough. I suppose that is part of being a parent. God I love my children.

On Sunday I ran with my friend Larry over the 3 bridges that span the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. I say Brooklyn side, since this time we did the bridges in reverse and headed through Brooklyn to the Williamsburg Bridge for our first crossing into Manhattan. We got started around 9:30am and begin the day with a loop through Prospect Park, where we exited onto Grand Army Plaza. From there it was down Flatbush Avenue and onto the NYC Marathon Route through Fort Greene and into Williamsburg. It was supposed to be a cold and windy day, but in actuality it wasn’t so bad. At times it felt positively warm outside, especially when we were running in the sun.

When we got into Fort Greene we stopped at McCarren Park for a bathroom/water break. When we came out, the sun had suddenly disappeared and it felt like it dropped 20 degrees. We were only at about 7.5 miles at this point and the rapidly changing weather is what we had to contend with for the remainder of the day. It really wasn’t a problem as long as we kept moving. Otherwise, I tended to get a bit cold when standing still.

Once we left McCarren Park, we headed down Bedford Avenue for the Williamsburg Bridge. It was here that I decided to take my first picture of the day. I had brought my camera and asked Larry to take a picture. I am about ½ mile onto the bridge, just before the start of the bridges superstructure/suspension. If you can read the sign you can see that this bridge was completed in 1906. It is hard to believe they built these great structures so long ago. I wanted to take some more pictures once on the center of the Bridge, but felt it was poor form to ask Larry to keep stopping so I could indulge in my picture snapping habit.

It was a bit windy running over the Williamsburg Bridge, but the views were fantastic. The run over it took us to the Lower East Side. From there we headed back towards East River. We had a good view of the bridge from there, so we took another picture. Here I am trying to create an action shot. I hope it looks like I am running, though apparently I am heading right for a fence. After this picture, we headed down the east river towards the South Street Seaport and over to the Brooklyn Bridge. We stopped at a street vendor for some refreshments, who asked if we would like a hotdog. I have nothing against dirty water dogs, but not in the middle of a long run. We both got a Gatorade and then sat down on a bench by the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridges pedestrian path. I thought the Woolworth building looked particularly nice today so I asked Larry to take another picture. The building came out great, but I think I look like a dork.

We then did our run over the Brooklyn Bridge. The views from here are fantastic, but running the BB is a pain in the ass. It’s just too crowded. Once over the bridge we make a left onto Tillary Street and headed back into Manhattan by way of the south side of the Manhattan Bridge. It made for some excellent hill training. As we ran over it into Chinatown and we wondered if we would see any of the costumes for the Chinese New Year Parade. There was a lot of traffic, but other than that we didn’t see any revelers. We didn’t run for long in Chinatown and just crossed Canal Street for a nice tempo run back into Brooklyn on the North side of the bridge.

Once in Brooklyn, we headed back up Flatbush Avenue to Prospect Park. Larry and I were both wearing Polar 625x heart rate monitors which also gives you your distance ran. For some reason my monitor was reading about 1.5 miles greater in distance than Larry’s by this point. When we got back to our starting point in the park, I had just turned 20 miles, while Larry was at 18.2 miles. Larry wanted to turn 20 on his Polar 625x, so I accompanied him for a bonus 1.8 miles. For the record I think my watch was more accurate, so I am going to stick with my total distance on the day being just about 22 miles.

Once home, I ate, showered, ate again and then shocked my shin with my TENS Unit. After that I vegged out on my couch and iced my shins for about 40 minutes. My shin felt ok, not great, but not excruciatingly painful. Denial so far is still working out. For some reason, I was feeling a little tired by this point. I was a little concerned with this since 22 miles will have to feel as though it was nothing more than a warm-up at some point. However, I am not feeling tired or sore this morning so perhaps I was just running a little low on energy.

My shin was a bit painful today, but nothing too bad. I am still not limping when I walk. Developing a limp will be my litmus test to know I need to back off. In the meantime I am going to relish in my gradually increasing mileage. This week I am scheduled for two 9 milers, a 6 mile and a 24 miler. I am looking forward to them.

Well, I am still running on my leg with the painful shin. I just apply some Denial and I am good to go. Denial is a great product, you can get it right off the shelf and all it really costs is some breakthrough pain in the morning. So far the costs have been manageable, although it does seem to get a little bit more expensive every day. But as long as it is just a little bit at a time I think I can manage it. I attribute these rising cost to inflation (aka inflammation), but just so long as the price rises slowly I think I will be able to keep up with it.

I am really not sure what I will do if the cost suddenly spikes and I find myself no longer able to afford it. My whole identity as an athlete right now is wrapped up in doing this 100 mile race. I want it very bad and I am willing to put up with a lot. I just don’t see myself doing anything else right now. Well, check that, I can, but I don’t want to do them. Maybe I can spend some time on the Elliptical Trainer at the gym as an alternative to running once a week. At least the motion is similar to running.

Last night when I came home from work, I was feeling very tired, slightly nauseous and the Denial was wearing off a bit so my shin was feeling a bit painful. I really wanted to just go to sleep and call it a day, but doing that is not how a 100 mile runner is made. So I lathered on some more Denial, took 3 ibuprofen (works great in combination with Denial) and went out for an 8 mile run. I have to say that once I got going, I started to feel much better. I was very pleasantly surprised. Sometimes when I am tired I get a mile from home, run out of juice and wind up walking. Not last night though. My legs carried me very well and I had a spiffy 8.1 mile run in 1:11:16; only 6 seconds slower than my run on Tuesday night. Not bad considering how I felt when I started and the fact that I once again overdressed.

So to answer my Twitter friend Darkgracie’s question “you are crazy! your shin will just hurt worse… is living in denial working for you? *wink*”, – yes, denial is working for me so far. People live in denial all of the time and survive. Denial can take you a long way. I just need my denial to take me 100 miles.