20 mile attempt 1

Total Distance So Far: 263.6 miles

Woke up bright and early on Saturday morning to attempt our one and only 20 mile run. We were going to do it on part of the actual Portland Marathon course too, which was exciting.

Val and I stepped off. Val asked how my foot felt. I told her I wanted to wait a bit before commenting on it. About a mile in tho, I said, yeah. This is nice being able to run for once without constant pain in my foot. REALLY nice. I guess I spoke too soon.

At 2.25 miles I started experiencing little stabbing pains in my heel right about where I had the shot. I stopped running. I encouraged Val to continue with the others instead of running alone (she offered to walk with me back to the start, but that didn't make any sense, plus I was SO CLOSE to the start so it was no big deal to walk it), and I took myself out of the run for the day.

On the 1.7 mile walk back to the start I had 2 more more acute stabbing pain experiences that passed after a couple seconds. The coaches all said I made the right decision to not continue running.

See, my doctor didn't want me running on Saturday. He said it was too soon, and 20 miles was too much. He was adamant, and I told him I'd play it by ear. The coaches just before the run told me that I should really pay attention to how my foot felt for the beginning of the run in particular. So all in all, they were all right. I think my foot wasn't done recovering from the shot just yet.

Once I had taken myself out of the run, I had some breakfast and coffee, then went home and had a little nap, then got up and put my dog in the car, and went back to the meeting point at around 11:30am to pick up Val. She came in all smiles, she had a very strong run. I'm proud of her!

Coach Joe wants me to attempt the 20 miles again on Tuesday morning by myself. I was considering 5 laps on a 4-mile loop from my house, but he suggested doing something a touch more interesting than that so the run is more fun (and not miserable). He also told me Wednesday was the latest I should attempt the 20 miler... any later than that and I'd be hurting my chances for running the marathon successfully. Also, Karl and Joe both told me that since I was able to run the 18 mile run, I SHOULD be ok for the marathon even without this last group run.

Nonetheless, I'd LOVE to have a 20 miler under my belt before attempting 26.2.

So since things went the way they did on Saturday, I went lap swimming on Sunday afternoon.

Same workout as last time:
Warm-up: 300m kickboard (flutter kick)
Workout:
* 300m breaststroke
* 100m wait-for-it
* 300m breaststroke
* 100m paddles
* 300m breaststroke
* 150m crawl
Cool-down: 300m kickboard (flutter kick)

Total: 1850m

After this I was playing around with mapmyrun.com trying to figure out a good course to run on Tuesday morning. I think I have a good candidate. I'll be running with a waterbottle in hand (because no aid stations) and a cell phone in my pocket. My friend Paul knows the routes I intend to run and in what order, so if I get into trouble I'll call him for a pick-up.

Unfortunately, it also looks like it's going to be cold and raining tomorrow morning.

poo.