And that's a wrap

I think the gods were against me running this marathon. First the inflamed tendon now this.

Ok, I got out to do 5 miles. I'm at about mile 2 on a beautiful run. All of a sudden my ankle rolls on and edge of pavement on the side of the road and I go flying. I am screaming it hurts so bad. I think I broke my ankle. I pull myself over to the grass and just yell. My knees and hands are in so much pain along with my ankle. I'm laying on my back with my knees pulled up to my chest and a car just drives on by. I must have screamed for about 3 minutes.

Thank goodness I decided to bring my cell phone with me (in case the tendon started hurting again and I need a ride home). I call my house and ask my aunt to come get me that I fell and am hurt bad. While I wait for her I watch the blood rolling down from my knee to my foot. I'm a mess and shaking like crazy.

I decide to test out the ankle. I can walk on it but it does hurt in various places. My aunt and Avery arrive. I get home and take my shoes off. My ankle is swelling by the second. It's huge. I was hoping I had just twisted it really bad but based on the swelling its a sprain. The blood on my hands and knee clotted so it was a pain in the ass to clean the cuts out. They are all pretty deep.

I wrapped my ankle in an ace bandage and have it elevated with ice on it. I took my prescription antibiotic and am sitting on the bed stewing. WTF. Why? Really?

Editted to add: Here are some pictures after I cleaned the cuts up. I have to get the one's off my phone from when I first fell. They actually look worse now, several hours later as the redness from the burning is becoming apparent.

Foot Update

So Monday I drove to the parkway to do my LR. I started out and felt great. My body was very happy to be hitting the trail again. I was even thinking to myself that I will never be able to stop running, it would drive me insane, I'd miss it so.

I got to around 4 miles area where the injured tendon is started to feel tight and uncomfortable. I stopped and stretched a little, shook it out so to speak. When I started to run again same thing and then it started to hurt. I got scared and ended up walking the last mile of the loop to my truck. I didn't even get to finish one of the 3 loops I had planned.

I found a rock by the river and stuck my feet in to ice them and sulked. How frustrating. Alexis asked me later if I'd consider switching to the half and I said not yet. I'm not giving up hope yet but its not looking good.

I'll give it a little bit more time. If its still jacked up next week I guess I'll go to the doctor. I didn't run yesterday because Avery was home sick but I will try to get in a couple of miles today and see how it feels.

Stressing

I don't know what to do. My foot feels ok when I jog around a bit but hurts like hell when I'm walking. I know its because I run midfoot to toe and I walk heal to toe on the outside of my feet (the tendon is on the outside of the back of the foot).

Should I run and risk the injury lasting longer or getting worse (even if it feels ok while I'm running) or should I not run and loose my fitness! It's not like I can go on the bike or elliptical or anything to keep up my cardio. I can't use the foot so that just leaves low impact stuff.

I have an 18 miler planned for Sunday. I wouldn't mind giving it up for a shorter distance and running my long run another day during the week as long as I could run!

This is totally why I was scared to RACE the PDR instead of running it. I'll be so ticked if this F's up me being able to run the marathon.

Tootleks and recovery

Yesterday were fartleks. 3 for 3 minutes each 1m w/u 1m c/d for a total of 5 miles. I did them at the beginning of each mile so I could keep track of the time I spent doing them.

We don't mention the word fart at home we say toot so Mike said to call them farleks (and didn't believe it was really a word until I pulled it up on wikipedia). I mentioned it today on kickrunners and someone said I should call them tootleks, so there you have it.

They went well. I did them at home which meant hills but I picked my least hilly route. I did the mile warmup really slow and then hit the first one on a gradual uphill at 9:58 pace. Not that fast, oh well (as you'll see this again tells me I need 2 miles of warmup). The worst was that the recovery for this was a steep hill. Ughhh. Next one was 8:58, now that's better. It was pretty much flat for this one. Next one was more uphill than the first and I did it in 9:03. Did my cooldown and a 1/2 mile walk. Not to shabby.

Today was 5 miles easy. I stayed up last night watching The Other Boleyn Girl and didn't get to sleep until almost 1:00 so getting up at 5:15 was not fun, thank goodness I have to meet my RP at her house or I would have slept in. It was soupy humid this morning and I was tired so it wasn't a fun run. Typically on this route I get really warmed up at around 2.5 or 3 miles and book back in but today my pace stayed pretty consistent, only increasing about 15 seconds the last mile.

Tomorrow is a well needed rest day. I'm actually enjoying the speedwork (never thought I'd hear myself say that). And I'm very glad my coach decreased my weekly mileage from what I was doing during base training because its leaving my legs tired and sore. Having Friday off is perfect because by my Saturday morning long run my legs feel rested and the runs are great. Hopefully once I get some more speedwork under my belt my legs won't feel that tired, even if the rest of me is from staying up late watching the olympics!

1st official speedwork session

I did it! Yippee! And it wasn't as horrible as I thought. I went a little faster than I had planned on each interval. I based my times on Macmillan's chart. Overall I'm happy with the workout. Here's my results.:

1 m w/u - 10:51
1600 - 9:01

800 - 4:28 (9:00)

400 - 2:02 (8:08)

200 - 0:52 (7:18)

1/2m c/d - 5:40 (11:16)

Here's what Macmillan and RunnersWorld say I should be doing based on my best 10miler of 1:40:








What I think of the track? I think it will take some getting used to, more for the warm up and cool down than anything else. I might do my warm up off of the track next time and ask my coach for a 2 mile warm up. It usually takes me 2 or so to feel good.

Let the Countdown begin...

Well not really since I don't have my training plan yet but training does start for me next Monday. However, I just booked my room for November for the marathon. So I'm registered and have a place to stay, now all I have to do is run run run.