No More Sulking

I'm done with my crying, time for a little update.

Obviously not getting into the marathon was a bit depressing. I took a break from training, started drinking, smoking, finished an eight-ball for solo, shot up a bit of heroin, you now, "took a break". That weekend me Kimmie and I hosted our housewarming party where I crushed everyone with the bad news. They all consoled me by getting me more heroin, except for my buddy Ralph and his wife CL who bought me a Garmin Forerunner 305 as a housewarming gift (more on that incredible piece of technology later).

Shortly after that I decided that I would focus on the lottery that I did win the, the Nike Half-Marathon. I strapped on my new Garmin and went running. Now, before I received the bad news I had upped my training pace from 9:30/mile to 8:00/mile. It was very exciting that I could run that quickly for distances over five miles. So, instead of pacing myself as I normally would I would just go and run as fast as I could, sometimes adding mileage to my run midway through. I lost discipline. I also stopped going to yoga and didn't increase my stretching before or after runs to compensate.

So, as you can guess where I'm going with this, on my second run with my new 305, as I approached mile 4 at Orchard Beach, I began to feel soreness in my calf and pain on my left shin. I had planned a return to trip for an 8 mile run but had to walk back half of the way home before I could catch a bus.

After a bit of self diagnosis, I came to the conclusion that I had shin splints. I had felt some discomfort before but after this happened I found myself limping while walking. The treatment for this condition is rest, stretching, massage and icing of inflamed areas. The tricky thing about shin splints is that your legs can feel just fine even during the first mile or two of a run until the stress on the muscles begin to tear them anew.

So, I have spent the last month resting and stretching. I have lost a lot of valuable training time for the half marathon which is on Sunday, August 5th. My max mileage before the injury was seven miles and I had a lot of work to do before I could run 13.1 miles. I decided this past weekend that I needed to shit or get off the pot. I would need to get to 10 miles within the next couple of weeks or just write the whole thing off.

I went up to me Kimmie's parents place this weekend. I committed to running 8 miles on Saturday and 9 miles on Sunday to see if my legs could handle it. They did and I'm back on track. Rested Monday, ran 6 miles Tuesday, resting today and running 8 tomorrow. If I can get to 10 miles by next week I believe I can safely do up to 11 miles before the race. I'm told that the competition and adrenaline will give you an extra couple of miles at race time. I hope that's the case and I hope its enough.