Tuesday, October 19, 2010

If It Ain't Broke ... Break IT

Thus summarizes my general approach to life.  Not quite sure why it works out this way, but I’m notorious for it.  I’m in the process of applying this ass-backwards approach to my marathon training.  Not going to share the details, since I know it’s a high-risk change I’m making and the vast majority of you would tell me to remove my head from my arse and stick with what I’ve been doing.  And yes, you’d probably be right.  Such is the result on those occasions when the two drunk monkeys rattling around in my head wake up and decide to take control of the reins.
Knocked out my 23-mile longest long-run Saturday morning, and was really pleased with the results.  Average pace was 9:10 for the run, and stayed pretty consistent between 8:45 and 9:15 pace throughout.  From a fitness standpoint I really felt good.  Not saying I didn’t get tired, but I feel like I’m in much better shape a month out from M2 than I was a month out from M1.  My knee felt pretty good throughout as well.  However ….. much anger from the bottoms of my feet (my heels) from about mile 10 onwards.  That seems to be the magic mile number at which point the Fasciitis monster wakes up and decides to make itself known.  The foot woes are what prompted the change alluded to above.  We’ll see if I can tame the beast in time for OBX.

As far as soreness goes, I fared MUCH better than I thought I would.  I’m chalking that up to a combo of better overall fitness, and some quality ice-bath time.  Got out and ran again this morning, and nothing had that post-race feeling I was expecting since I danced pretty close to the marathon-distance with this training run.  I think I’ve got my hydration/fueling nailed down as well, although I froze my FuelBelt bottles before I ran, like I’ve done all summer, but the stiff wind and 48 degrees meant that my first bottle was still frozen when I tried to drink it, and the second bottle was more of an Accelerade slurpee.  Lesson learned there as well.  Only freeze 2 of the 4 bottles for race day.

13 comments:

  1. I think you just gotta do whatever you gotta do and you learn what works and what doesn't along the way. I hope it pans out perfectly for you! Glad you weren't too sore after the 23. Good luck, looking forward to seeing what the new plan is :).

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  2. Change your plan to a way that makes you happy. It's YOUR plan, so do what you want. :)

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  3. Way to put 23 in the books! Impressive!! Sometimes, plans have to change and you have to be flexible! Good luck!

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  4. Better to make mistakes like freezing the bottles in training than race day. Nice progress, bummer about the 10 mile heel problem.

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  5. Great job on the 23-miler. I am with everyone else. The training plan is yours so do what works for you!

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  6. Books and training plans don't know squat about YOU so if your plan works for you, that's wonderful. Of course we are all curious what it looks like so we can try and see if it works for us. :)

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  7. Great job getting the 23 miler done! I am curious about your changes. Hopefully, they'll work for you and for M2. Have a great week!

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  8. Wow, congratulations on getting in a 23 miler, you are so ready for this!

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  9. Sounds like things are working well for you. Well done with your long run. You are certainly ready for the marathon.

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  10. You just gotta go with your gut.... it'll never steer you wrong. I will say that based on your 23 miler, you seem to be right on track. Rock solid in fact. Now we just need to get that heel to cooperate.

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  11. Congrats on the great 23 miler! Keeping your miles within 30seconds of each other for that distance on a training run is very impressive.

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  12. The bottle freezing lesson is a good one to find out NOW rather than on race day. :-)

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  13. I never thought of doing that bottle trick, I'll have to remember that one!

    Great run, hope the PF stays away!

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