The MS Runner

Running While Battling Foot Blisters, Leg Cramps, Black Toe Nails - and MS

Archive for April, 2008


A Runner’s Number One Fear

Published April 27th, 2008 in gas, Colfax Marathon | 2 Comments »

Well after a whole week off from running, I ventured out on Saturday to test my leg and see how it would hold up.  I was quite surprised that after 5 miles, I felt great.  I was scheduled to do 20, and I was hoping for 10.  So instead of turning around at the 5 mile mark, I pushed onward.  At one point, between 7 and 8 miles, I came to this uphill portion which in itself isn’t bad, but then Mr. Wind decided to exhale and it seemed like I was walking for a mile.  In Colorado near the foothills, it can get extremely windy.  I think at that point, I would have been wise to turn around, but as I’ve said before, I’m not too smrt smart.  I turned around at 10 miles and headed back knowing that for most of the run, it would be downhill and the wind would be at my back.  My leg was feeling fine and I was determined to grind it out.  The only problem was that my body had other plans for me.  At about mile 14, my leg started to hurt, but not really too bad.  Then the unthinkable happened.  Yes, my friends and family, I got gas real bad!  Hey!  Someone has to admit it, and that someone is ME.  I stopped running for fear of having my nice $40 running shorts ruined.  How embarrassing.  I ended up walking the final 4 miles with my butt cheeks firmly clamped together.  After awhile, it all made sense.  My body was telling me that I needed to take it easy on my leg, but instead of making my leg hurt, my body gave me gas.

Today I feel great.  My leg is a little sore, but overall it feels fine.  I think that this week will be the deciding point to see if I’ll be running The Colfax Marathon on May 18.  After this week, I start to taper, so I need to get in some good quality workouts so I can gauge my fitness and see how my leg is holding up.  I’m confident that this will be a good week and that I will be back on track.  I just need to find the bathroom.

Now you’ve gone and done it

Published April 20th, 2008 in quad, Greenland Trail, training, Colfax Marathon | 2 Comments »

I had a feeling this might happen.  I woke up Saturday and drove to the Greenland Trail race that I was going to be doing, and my leg felt pretty good.  There was still some soreness, but not too bad.  Before the run, I was able to do some easy quad stretches, and I didn’t feel any pain at all.  As I stated in earlier post, I have been having a sore quad muscle.  Anyways, I started out running slow, mainly because of the trail conditions, and the number of slow runners in front of me.  After mile 1, the elevation started going up and within a span of 4 miles, went from an elevation of 6,875 to 7,425.  I believe that was my downfall.  I still ran (of course.  I am a male!) and once I started going back downhill, I thought I’d be fine.  The course is 8 miles, and I was going to do 16, which meant doing 2 loops.  I hope I didn’t lose anybody there with my overly educated math skills.  I finished the first loop and started back on the 2nd 8 miles.  Well after a little bit of elevation gain again, I was toast.  My leg really started hurting, and I tried to over compensate for it and ended up starting to put a strain on my knee.  At this point I stopped, put my tail between my legs, and turned around.  I was officially a DNF (did not finish).

It’s not so much that I didn’t finish, it’s that I think that I really did some damage to my leg.  Today it hurts like hell and I had a hard time going up and down stairs.  I’m really worried that this is going to set me back on my training and maybe even make me postpone doing The Colfax this year.  That would really suck.

Colfax Marathon warm up

Published April 17th, 2008 in quad, Greenland Trail, Tigers, baseball, Colfax Marathon | 3 Comments »

This weekend I am going to run in the Greenland Trail 50K.  Not that I would run 50K though.  There’s actually a 25K and an 8 Mile run.  I’m going to do the 25K which is about 16 miles, on trail, with altitude.  I was thinking of wearing a back pack full of rocks just for fun also.   I was going to run this as a race, but my left quad (I love saying quad.  Quad, quad, quad) has been hurting the last couple of days, so if it’s not better by Saturday, I’m going to take it a bit easy.  My marathon is 4 weeks away, so I don’t want to be doing anything stupid.  But then again, I’ve never been one to be real smrt  smart.

How do you like my baseball prediction so far?  2 ways you can look at it.  The Tigers suck and they are in last, or the Tigers are just getting warmed up and they are only 4 1/2 games back of first.  I’ll go with the latter.

I never did do my 6 word memoir.  I’m such a slacker and I apologize for my slackification.  I was thinking of this;                                                                                      

                                 “I used to be wild and crazy, now I’m just mild and lazy”

I think that’s slightly more than 6, so I’m still working on it.

I know weather is crazy all over the country, but this is ridiculous.  This past Tuesday in Denver, it was 85 degrees!  Then on Wednesday, it was 35 and snowing.  It’s global warming mixed in with the new ice age.

Play Ball!

Published April 2nd, 2008 in tagged, baseball | 5 Comments »

Baseball season has started and it’s time for the totally clueless fan to say how great his team is.  Just about every team has a shot to win 100 games and win the World Series.  But baseball is so hard to pick because there are so many games and you can tell when a team just “phones it in” and doesn’t play hard.  They just played an extra inning game the night before a Sunday afternoon game, and they don’t care.  But they did that in the old days too, and the players I grew up watching, never phoned it in.  I believe the biggest change in the game today is the money that the players make.  Why play hard when you get paid an obscene amount of money?  The players of yesteryear played hard to get to the playoffs because of the extra money they could make.  Nowadays, that’s pocket change for them.  Having said that, here’s my fearless for sure prediction for the World Series.  It’s going to be the Detroit Tigers versus the Chicago Cubs.

On a completely different topic, I was “tagged” by Kristen of the blog Run Faster to write a six word memoir.  Here are the rules;

  1. Write your own six word memoir
  2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want
  3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
  4. Tag at least five more blogs with links; and
  5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play

I haven’t done anything with this yet because I haven’t really taken the time to think about it.  I’ll get to it soon I hope.