See up until now, being tired and hungry have been the only side effects of all this training. That's been fine. But then this week came along and my knees logged a pretty solid protest to what's been going on for the last few months. Truth be told, I have been surprised at the lack of vocalizations on the part of my knees, as they have been fairly cooperative until now. Well it seems I have a good old boring case of patellar tendonitis- basically from overuse during the weekly long runs. My tendon has been beaten up a little and my kneecap is tracking in weird places, causing inflammation. Well after icing and ibuprofen, things werent looking so good, until I said screw it! I went to the Walgreens and decided to give one of those knee straps a shot. Those things work by putting compression on the tendon, basically tightening things up so the kneecap stays in place. SON Of A BITCH it worked like a charm within the first hour of wearing it around the lab. I went for a short run with it on and no pain whatsoever. The real test would come later in the week, when I went for the longest run of my life- the 18 miler!
Here's the thing about running 18 miles- you get bored when you do it by yourself. And you get bored of your music, your trail ( I ran the meadow a few loops to preserve joints, and to keep known water and bathroom sites near). And your mind starts running in all directions about how this sucks, you are slow, you look fat, why are you doing this, your hips hurt., etc. It's just kind of an attn deficit disorder nightmare of non focused thoughts. My naive dreams were that I would take that time to think about stuff and work out problems from experiments, or garden design from my house, or whatever. It just doesnt work like that for me if I run on my own. So it's more like running with a three-year old. Only that three year old is you.
Another thing you learn when you are running for 3.5 hrs straight (yup, no run-walk, only running with 4 or 5 minutes of down time for water/bathroom/stretch) is what foods your body can handle while running. I tried carbo loading this week again, after that massive bonk last week and it consisted of two servings of ziti on Thursday and a big bowl of rice on Friday. Basically it made me feel uncomfortably full, like a bad Thanksgiving overload. I went into food coma and fell asleep. This is not the way to do it for me. I need to do some loading at lunch, and by loading they say to have an extra roll, but without butter, or an extra bagel, no cream cheese. Pretty much it's going to be about an extra 300 calories for me- that's it- according to their little calculator. I guess for me, it's more about rest and eating on the fly, than it is about stuffing my face a few days out. Oh and addressing the former, it's all about the sportbeans now, instead of powerbars. These things are awesome, the choking hazard not withstanding. It's just a matter of being talented enough to run and get them out of the package without tripping yourself up!
Lastly, you get good kharma when you run these distances. I saved a MAssiVE praying mantic from getting squished on the trail. THe thing was HUGE. Very cool. dont know quite how I picked that out from the trail when I was on mile 14, but was alert enough to zoom in on her. So I saved her so she can rip the head off her mate later that week.
Anyway, no real repercussions from my run, just soreness in the knee. Nothing major in the muscles. That is until after I got my 90 minute massage on Sunday. My masseuse abused my back and legs with her elbows. I was wincing the whole time, but walked out on a cloud of air when she was done. I have to admit though, my back is sore today (mon) from her breaking up all the knots and adhesions in my back. What can I say, I am a trainwreck all around.
So let's tally this up:
Monday: 5.0 miles
Tuesday: 3.3 miles
Wednesday: crosstraining strap crazy-tricep destroying class 45 min
Thursday: personal trainer 30 min with 1.5 miles running, then 60min cross training strappy tricep-destroying class part II
Friday: off. pass out.
Sat: 18 miles
Sunday: epic massage
total 27.8 miles
ONE MORE LONG TRAINING RUN TO GO UNTIL RACE DAY. I hope everything hold together for the taper...
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