Saturday, July 14, 2007

Week 15

The big week. In many ways this week, the highest mileage week of my program, has been the focus of my training, even more than the marathon. I thought, if I can get through to that peak week then I'd be in good shape for the marathon.

The numbers:
  • Running: 32 miles (on a plan of 40 miles)
  • Time: 6hrs 25mins
As you can see, things rebounded some what from the previous forced fall back week and I got some much needed final miles in.

The foot injury held up well during the week. It was ever present as a faint something, but didn't escalate. I ran 3, 10, then 3 miles. The 10 mile run was also one of those focus points of this training cycle. The peak mid-week mileage on the 4th of July holiday. I really enjoyed this run and felt pretty encourage about the marathon outlook after this.

Then Sunday came and we went out for our 20 miler. I felt I needed another long run before the taper so I went for it. If I made it then it would be like week 14 never happened. If I broke I'd have 3 weeks to heal.

It felt pretty good for the first 10 miles, but then fell apart. How can something be fine for two hours and then have a problem? It was right after our half way point where we stopped at our car to fill up on water. Perhaps my foot started to swell at that moment or something. We took off from the cars and I had the same sensation of there being an unusual pressure in my shoe. A couple of miles later the pressure had became more like stabbing pain and soon after that I was walking back to the car. There's no point in pushing through that kind of thing in a training run.

Back at the car I waited for Patty to finish her run. I couldn't locate any sharp objects to kill myself with, so I just had to sit there watching a woman hit a tennis ball against a wall for an hour. When Patty finally showed up she was only 17 miles into hers and had circled back to see how I was doing. She wasn't doing so good either (ITB issues), but she was moving. She suggested that if I needed to kill myself, the BART tracks were close by. I didn't think of that.

Anyway, enough dwelling on the failure of this run. My goal now is to forget it happened and get my foot in shape to take the marathon. I'm fit enough to run it, I have a solid number of miles banked. I just need a working foot. Now almost a week later, it doesn't really hurt anymore so hopefully in two weeks it will be healed enough to not relapse in the marathon.

Here's a graph of my training up until the taper, just for the fun of it:

Time will tell if it's enough.

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