Back at it

So sixteen days have gone by since the run and I decided to give the legs a test. A whopping two hour run. I've run exactly four times since Spartathlon - twice as rabbits for the runners at the kids' school cross country meets (three short bursts of about three minutes each, but, hey, some of those kids are fast!), once with the cross country team in the morning for about twenty-five minutes, and a thirty minute jaunt on the treadmill. Each of these times running resulted in no real discomfort in the legs, only fatigue.
Today I headed out for my two hours. I was thinking I need to do some faster work in order to at least go under eight hours in Italy (twenty-six days to go). I decided to go out for 30 minutes easy, 20 min fast, 10 min easy, 20 min fast, 10 min easy, 10 min fast, and finish off with a 20 min easy cool down. I don't know where I come up with these workouts. It's why I don't think I could ever become a coach - not a lot of rhyme or reason to my workouts. It was to be quite a hilly trip first down to White Rock then through the rollers after the beach and back again so it would be challenging.
Ten minutes in I found a Blackberry phone in a nice little pouch by the side of the road. I tried calling the home number in the address book but it was busy. I hooked it on my waist and kept going, trying to call every five minutes or so. I got pretty good at running while dialing but didn't want to be seen by anyone or else I might be mistaken for one of THOSE people I can't stand who talk while working out. It actually rang a little while later which I barely heard with my earphones in. I told the lady where I was running and what I was wearing but I guess they never found me. It rang an hour later with a report that her husband would meet me at the pier in White Rock. We finally hooked up and the exchange was made. I'm 2 for 2 in finding and returning phones I've found on the side of the road while running. My all-time dream fantasy while running is to find a backpack in a ditch and it turns out to be full of cash. Still looking.

Here is the run broken down:

0 - :30 3.99mi 7:42 avg. pace
:30 - :50 2.93mi 6:42 avg. pace
:50 - 1:00 1.14mi 8:26 avg. pace
1:00 - 1:20 3.02mi 6:37 avg. pace
1:20 - 1:30 1.24mi 8:02 avg. pace
1:30 - 1:40 1.46mi 6:51 avg. pace
1:40 - 1:59 2.32mi 8:11 avg pace

avg pace for whole run was 7:23

Pace needed to go 7:30 in Italy - 7:14/mile (yikes!!)
Pace for a new PR (7:38) - 7:22/mile (yikes!!)
Pace for 7:59 - 7:42/mile (okay!!)

Okay so I only did 1:59 and not 2 but the bump on the back of my right heel was bugging me and getting a bit of a blister on it. This bump appeared a few weeks before Spartathlon and would get inflamed after a run. The whole achilles area felt really tight when trying to stretch my calf muscle.




Have you EVER seen an uglier ankle than that?!?! Anyways, it didn't bug me at all over 246km so I think with some drugs and stubbornness I can make it through 100km.