Keeping on, Keeping on

As I mentioned before this week was crazy. I ran 4-5 miles on Tuesday morning, but I skipped my Thursday morning run because Wednesday night I played Ultimate Frisbee and I did some running there. That and I've had a busy week at work and I didn't want to get to work late. Then I was planning on running Saturday morning as usual for my step back week (I was planning on running 8 miles or so), but my poor wife has been sick for 2 weeks and had to get up with the kids everyday as I had to be to work early. So, I didn't run in the morning. Then I didn't run in the afternoon either because of said illness and I didn't want to be too far out of reach. Then I couldn't run in the evening because I had to prepare a talk for church so I didn't make it out at all yesterday (Yikes). However, since it was a step back week, I hope that it won't effect my future runs. I might try to squeeze in an extra short run this week to get my body back on track. Now that the craziness is over (hopefully) I'll be sure not to miss as many days of training. So, I'm keeping on, keeping on, I just need to keep on track a little better. That's it for me, and I really gotta run (especially this week).

Sorely Mistaken

I know I'm a little late posting this, but its been a very crazy week (I'll write a new post later to explain)

Well, I had a number of 1sts this week running. Besides the big goal of the week was to gut out 11 miles I experienced other not so exciting, but somewhat painful things this week (mostly it was Saturday, but I'll get to that momentarily). Running 10 miles was tough the week before, so I was a little nervous about adding another mile so soon. However, like always, the first few miles were good. I had a good pace and all the muscles were feeling fine. Before I get into the big run on Saturday I will briefly describe my shorter runs. It is difficult to run longer than 6 miles in the morning before work and still get there on time. I guess that's something I'll have to figure out real soon when my weekday miles get up in the 8-9 miles at a time. Back to Saturday. It was a cloudy, drizzily afternoon. No down pour, but lightly raining off and on the entire run. So this marks the first time I ran in rain. Not too bad, but then again, it wasn't constant and it wasn't very heavy. Another first was around mile 8 I ran by the house to grab a drink to keep myself hydrated and Deb and the girls (save the youngest) was outside and they cheered me on. Other than my 10k they haven't cheered me on before in my training runs, so that was a fun little bonus. Of course the biggest first was that this was the first time I ran 11 miles. As I found out later I had actually run 11.41 miles. Once again the last 3 miles were extremely difficult. I was having difficulty picking my feet up off the ground, but I kept my feet and legs moving. I wasn't as tired as I felt after this run as I did the week I ran 10, but I still was tired. Still I felt great that I was able to run 11 miles.

Lastly, I had a first this run as to pain. After 7 miles I was really noticing a pain that was a stinging feeling and very unconfortable. This wasn't a pain of muscle, tendon or bone, but ... a pain in the skin. I don't know if it was the rain or me dumping water over my head, but my wet shirt I think caused my nipples to become very chaffed and sore. It a new experience for me and I'm sure I looked funny as I ran I periodically pulled my shirt away from my body to minimize the friction my shirt was causing. I was warned that this might happen so now I'm going to have to find some remedy to prevent this from happening again. For all those who have not had issues with this, be grateful. VERY grateful.

So a run full of firsts and I hope that the firsts continue as I reach my goal of 13.1. Gotta run.