Long Run

I’m training for the Twin Cities Marathon this year which is, of course, the most beautiful urban marathon in America. It’s on October 1st. 49 days from this writing. I’ve adapted for myself a training schedule taken from various Hal Higdon plans as well as information from other books. I’ve made it fit my busy schedule. I’m definitely not in the shape that I have been when I’ve run other marathons in the past. I’m looking at this one as a warm up for a long string of marathons.

Last week I had a really rough time with my 15 miler. I ended up walking as much as I ran for the last 3 miles. Today’s 16 miler and Thursday’s 9 miler were much easier. I did walk a little toward the end today, but not a lot. The differences in my prerun actions that I can remember were:

• I wore different shoes. I bought a pair of trail running shoes to protect the soles of my feet on some of the rougher terrain I run on. (I live in Illinois – I have to drive a long way to find a hill) They are surprisingly comfortable, but I don’t think they have as much conditioning as my much too old Mizuno Wave Riders. I put the wave riders on today. (I’m on the Dave Ramsey budget.)
• I ate more breakfast. I ate a peanut butter sandwich and some peach yogurt and drank some diet Dr. Pepper.
• I also put some honey in my water that I took on the run. I wear a Fuel Belt- Revenge the motion of running kept the honey well desolved. I was thinking I’d at least get some glycogen back in my muscles.

So for whatever reason, the run was much better. I did have one issue that is kind of interesting. For some reason I’ve developed a blister on the inside of my little toe on my right foot. At about mile 13 it started hurting really bad. I took my sock off (non-runners might want to tune out here) and saw some skin hanging off. After I removed it,it hurt like crazy and I didn’t think I could go on. I took both shoes off and walked for about 5 minutes and then said to myself “It’s going to take forever to get back” Sometimes ADD is a good thing. So what I did, since I didn’t have an Active
Strip (I work for 3M Company – they’re much better than bandaids) is I found a shiny leaf – non-poison ivyish – and wrapped it around my little toe to separate the toes and keep the flap of skin in place. Put my shoes and socks back on and away I went. It hurt for the first few steps and then I was ok.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal Trail (I & M Canal Trail) is a great trail to run on. Crushed limestone and 60 miles long not including all the other trails it connects into. Quite a few GeoCaches around it if you’re into that. I’ve linked geocaching with running many times. If you use Google Earth , here’s a kml file with my run along canal marked.Download JaysRun16Mile.kml

You can open it in Google Earth and see the run on the satellite map.

That’s it for now. I’ve got a busy rest of the weekend with the family and church.