Sidelined.

Well, crap monkeys. It looks like I have plantar fasciitis. The fact I haven't been able to put any weight on my heel since Saturday night without it resulting in stabbing, shooting pain was my first indication. When I tried to work it out last night during a five-mile run and came back in even more pain, I got the second indication that something really isn't right. I talked to Coach Crazylegs today and he actually told me not to run for the rest of the week! The same man who demands you run through ungodly cold temperatures, pouring down rain, white-out snow conditions, nausea, and mild diarrhea told me to rest for FOUR days! Oh, the humanity!! I was taking the whole thing pretty well, stiff upper lip and all that, until he had to go and get all dramatic like that. Now I'm in major freak out mode. To make matters worse, he told me to ride a stationery bike a few times so I don't lose cardio conditioning for Saturday's 20-miler. That's right, I'm looking at 20 miles this weekend. And I don't have a gym membership. I gave that up when running took over my life. Fortunately I'm able to glom on to the guest access at my parents' gym and hit the bike, but I'll only be able to do it once this week.

Somebody tell me this is no big deal. Please!

Holy crap...

do my legs hurt! I mean, super ouch. Wowza. I've already popped three ibuprofen; I could have maxed out at four but I wanted to leave a glimmer of more potential pain relief on the horizon. Seriously, my legs hurt like they haven't hurt since I got roped into some sadistic BodyPump class that consisted of nothing but squats for an hour. I ran 15 miles with the group today and that distance itself shouldn't cause pain--but, those hills. Lawd, those hills!! Coach Crazylegs is a sick f#$k for creating the course he did today. And I can't help but think, if it hurts this much now, what will tomorrow be like? Y'all know the second day is always worse. Thankfully the weather here was warm enough today to warrant an official "Margarita Madness" night at the Runner Girl household. These legs should be feeling pretty good, and wobbly, realllll soon.

Coach Crazylegs Was Right

Blast him. He proclaimed that I must always attend the obscenely timed 5:30 a.m. track workouts because I would never push myself as hard on my treadmill. Yeah right, I thought, he just doesn't know my masochistic tendencies yet. The theory was put to the test this week when five inches of snow caused track cancellation. Like a good little dedicated runner, I turned to my hamster wheel for some speed intervals. And ya know what? (You see it coming, I know you do.) I didn't run as fast as I do at track. I hate to be wrong, especially when it's combined with a weak performance on my part, but when I found myself singing along to Britney I knew I wasn't running fast enough. Yet I didn't increase my speed. It continues to boggle my mind that I can be both a marathon runner and lazy at the same time. How is that possible??

Oooh, better log the rest of my dreadmill miles for the week. Thank god they're over. Have I mentioned how much I dislike that thing?

Tuesday: 5.25 miles

Wednesday: 6 miles

I Need Some Wine with my Cheese

With the Blizzard of '09's five inches keeping us housebound today, I found myself heading for the basement dreadmill to log a few minutes of sanity. Not being a true devoted fan of said dreadmill, I am constantly looking for new forms of entertainment to help ease those miles. Today, the burden fell on my dear beloved iPod shuffle. I started by finishing the FreshAir podcast, because I'm edgy like that, from last Thursday's run, but then I decided I needed some tunes to bring it home. That's how I ended up listening to Coldplay's Viva La Vida and imagining myself ruling "the world" of the marathon course in Cleveland. The next thing I knew, I was waving at imaginary spectators, giving my dad a thumbs up while he snapped photos, and tearing up as I neared the finish line. Unfortunately, the finish line was imaginary, but the tears weren't. God I'm a dork.

Today's miles: 5 (yeah, I figure I better start posting them again--it'll keep me honest)

Only the Lonely...

Who knew the middle of the pack could be such a lonely place?? At the encouragement of Coach Crazylegs, I've been pushing the pace of my long runs a bit. To fully grasp the pain-inducing effect of this endeavor, I should probably be honest and admit that my old Running Partner and I used to run at about a 10:15 pace. Sometimes we even hit 10:30. Amazing, eh? We were blurry streaks, I tell ya. Now, before you get all high and mighty with your speedy selves and look down on our turtle-ish pace, it's only fair to recognize that we chose this pace so we could talk freely and easily about the minutia of our daily lives. That was the main purpose of the outings at the time; the running was secondary.

Fast forward to two weeks ago when I tried to follow a friendly looking subgroup from my larger running group. We clocked in 12 hilly miles at around 9:00/mile. I thought I was going to die.

I took it a little easier last week--and Coach Crazylegs noticed. He was not pleased. You don't want to upset Coach Crazylegs, there's punishment in that.

Sooo, this week I tried to take it up a little notch. I managed 17 miles at 9:22/mile. Granted, some of you speedsters might still look down on that, but you're just being snobby if you do. I was proud of my pace.

Here's the problem: Out of the 20+ runners that ran today, not.a.single.one ran a similar pace. They all seemed to be going sub 9:00 or over 10:00. What's up with that? I joined a running group so I could run with people. If the people are too fast or slow, what's the purpose? At one point I stopped and waited for the back of the packers because I was, well, ahem, lost. And the friendly man (he said "good morning") holding a knife made me think I wasn't in the best area to go wandering.

Ah well, 17 miles are done. And Runner Boy and I are ditching the runlets so we can go to a concert tonight! Woot!

Runner Boy surfing the crowd around 11 p.m. tonight.

Oink, Oink

I'm a pig. Darn Subway and their $5 foot longs! I fully intended to save half for dinner but something ugly and gluttonous happened whilst my coworkers were daintily nibbling their grub. Seriously folks. I devoured that entire thing AND a bag of chips in TEN MINUTES. Can I call that carb loading for tomorrow's 17 miler?

My Cheatin' Heart

Gah. I hate to admit it, but I've been thinking about cheating. On my mileage that is. You see, I can pinpoint the problem. The problem is I have no frickin' official training schedule for this godforsaken marathon that's only ten (?) weeks away. Who doesn't even know how far away their marathon is?!?! For chrissake, I'm a hot mess this time around.

I've got Coach Crazylegs in one corner yelling "Run, run, run! A billion miles a week! Faster, longer, harder!" He's insane. Then I have Hal Higdon in the other corner saying "Take it easy. It's time on your feet, not effort that counts. Have fun. Be gentle with yourself." (That's a paraphrase obviously. Don't sue me, Hal.)

So where does that leave me? I try to find my own happy medium but this chick doesn't work well with some abstract happy medium. I need numbers. I need a spreadsheet. I need a training program that says what to run on what day.

I'm thinking I need to make up my own schedule, but I'm having trouble trusting myself with that endeavor. I'm committed to Coach Crazylegs for Wednesday track, which is about 5.5 miles, and Saturday long runs--which tend to be at least 4 miles longer than ol' Hal's suggestion on any given weekend, mind you. Should I just follow Hal for Tuesdays and Thursdays? What about when Hal's schedule gets up to 10 miles on Wednesday and I'm only doing 5.5 at track? Does that fact that I run so fast I puke in my mouth make up for the difference in distance?

Does everyone freak out this much??????