Feeling much better today

Last night I made like a “swoosh” and just did it.  I didn’t want to run, but figured I ought to go out and hit the bricks anyway, just to stay in the habit.

 

I only ran a mile, but I hated every step of it.

 

My legs felt like concrete pillars.  My breathing was labored.  I felt like I was running in sand, against a headwind, uphill, while pulling a loaded water cart.  And then it got worse.

 

9 ½ minutes later, I’m home and stretching out my legs and the real agony ensued.  You know that feeling when you have smash your finger and you have a blood blister under your finger nail and the pressure against your nail is just throbbing and it feels like an anvil is resting ever so gently upon your hand?  Yea, that’s about what it felt like down in my shins.  I’m not unfamiliar with the pain, but I’m not fond of it, either.

I broke down, took some drugs and laid under a couple of ice packs.  Screw the whole “let it heal” crap.  This hurt—a lot!  I wanted that pain to go far, far away, so I treated the symptom—take away the inflammation, take away the pain, get up and run some more.  Tonight I’ll try and pack in another 4 miles of hard running, maybe more, and then shut it down for a couple of days.  Tomorrow is not only an early morning, but also an 8^th anniversary for a very sweet woman I know.  Wednesday is class night.  Therefore, the schedule is going to be dictated by external events and I’ll be allowed to get in some good, deep stretching.  Just in case the pain isn’t quite gone, though, I’ll be bringing my cell phone to call for a ride home.  Just in case, you know.

 

I think I’m going to set the September goal at 100 total miles (52 miles for the month), and leave the cycling goal at 100 total miles (60-ish miles for the month), too.  I totally missed the cycling mark this month, but it looks like I’ll hit the running goal—if the pegs stay on message, that is.  In fact, the initial sketch of a schedule for September suggests I may come close to 90 miles for the month.  That’ll be a feat!!

 

October will feature at least one 10 miler and a half marathon distance (maybe even an actual half marathon), so that will be 2 of my weekend long runs.  There will be at least one more 10 or 13 miler thrown in there, so October will be at least 33 miles in long runs alone, probably twice or thrice that for the total month, marking the most miles I’ve run in a month, ever.  In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say it’ll likely be more miles than I ran in all of 2004 and close to as many miles I ran in 2005—all in a single month.

 

I’m still waiting for that breakthrough where I can just get up and go run, without the need to talk myself into getting up and going for a run.  Right now going for a run is like a shuttle launch—the slightest anomaly will cause me to halt the countdown and possibly scrub the launch.  I’d like for it to be more like going for a drive where “all systems are go” simply means the key is in the ignition, and that may not even be true.  I was almost there a couple weeks back, but not anymore.