The MS Runner

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.

I enjoy reading some of the other running blogs that I come across because they sometimes have good information, or some type of training tip that is useful.  It is a struggle sometimes to come up with something on my end that is useful, and maybe just slightly entertaining.  If this was just a journal that I listed how many miles I ran today, what type of terrain, and what the weather was like, I wouldn’t want to share that because for the most part, I don’t think anyone really cares.  “OMG, Dave ran 10 miles today and it was only 20 degrees!  I hope he’s okay!”  That being said, I ran 10 miles on Saturday and it was 35 degrees!  And I’m okay.  This was a recovery week and even though I only ran 10 miles, I did 4 miles of it at a 7:45 pace which for me is great.  Along the way, I spotted a bald eagle in a tree and it was totally awesome.  That thing was huge!  One bonus lately is it is staying lighter out later now, so at least when I get home from work and go running, there still is some daylight.  (Who cares Dave?  We can see that it’s staying lighter out.  We are not blind.)  Um, well I did stick to my guns about drinking only light beer despite my son Jason giving me shit about it.  He is somewhat confused in that he thinks that I’m either 260 pounds or 150 pounds.  I did decide though that Amstel Light is the way to go.  It is the best tasting light beer on the market in my opinion.

This week the new gym I joined opens up and I am going to try and work out in the mornings now, and go running after work.  I will see how that goes.  It may be that the gym will be packed because it’s brand new, and I won’t enjoy it if I have to fight over the equipment.  Stay tuned for more breath taking details on this, and many other earth shattering events to come.

Week one of my marathon training is in the bag, and I even got in a race today (Sunday).  I wasn’t planning on doing the run, but the race was just a 5K and it’s always nice to get the competitive juices going.  Plus the weather here (Denver, CO) is fantastic!  At race time it was 45 degrees, and right now it’s 65.  This is January in Colorado?  At least in the mountains it’s winter which is a good thing because they have the X Games going on in Aspen.  Anyway, back to ME.  I did 33 miles this week and even 2 yoga sessions.  Yes yoga!  Diane and I went to this one studio and tried out the class for free and decided that we liked it so we signed up for 6 classes.  It really feels good and I even worked up a sweat.  Oh by the way, the race I did today was a 5K, or 3.1 miles, but my Garmin actually measured it at 3.21.  Not sure what was up with that, but I’m going with 3.21 and I finished with a time of 24:27 which is 7:38 pace!  Being that I haven’t done any speed work for a month in a half and that I ran 14 miles the day before, I thought that was pretty darn good.

So it’s on to week two and I up my miles to 36 with Saturday being my long run at 16.  Hopefully the weather cooperates like it did this week.