Craig Hudman - Simply Live

14.44 / 45 min spinning doing hill climbs. I was planning on running yesterday and today but woke up both mornings with my ankle just throbbing so I slept in. Was going to spin yesterday but it turned out crazier than I thought. The next few days I'm going to try and rest it as much as possible, doing on a short run tomorrow or Thursday and spinning. It will be real interesting for me to see how my body will respond to this type of taper. I still feel really good on the bike and I'm able to put in a lot of effort and keep my HR where it needs to be. The scary thing  is I'm getting used to the bike and it's not so bad anymore. I think I'm enjoying it a bit.

House is sold, glad I'm not in St. George I'd have to pull out.  Need to be out of the house by Oct 1. Now, build or buy..... 

Easy run / Ankle test. Didn't feel very good today just kind of sick I guess. Ankle was OK. I woke up and its the best its felt in a couple of weeks so I decided to try to run. I wore my compression pants to help support it all the way through the knee. Around mile 3.5 I could feel a "twinge" and it was just a dull pain after that. Really didn't bug me but I know I'll have to concentrate on my form or it will throw everything off and might start hurting in strange places.

9.72 / 30min Spinning again. Not sure what to expect Saturday. I guess it will either hold up or it won't. A marathon is a heck of a way to test the thing out. I haven't had any long tempo runs or long progression runs in awhile. Ankle sore to the touch right above the inside heel bone.

10.44/35 min. Spinning. Turned down the resistance off of normal. I wanted 30 minutes but opted for the cool down 5 minutes as well. I'm feeling great today. Lots of energy. I think everything other than the ankle is good for tomorrow.

I have no illusions its going to hurt. I would guess pretty early into the run. I'm trying to prep myself mentally for it. I need to focus on keeping form and staying inside my pace guidelines (especially during the huge downhill at first). I hoping for a good run but who doesn't the day before a race? If I can get past this ankle everything else seems great. 

So the good news is that my ankle held up really well, bad news was that I could really tell I haven't been running. This really wasn't driven home until around mile 18 when me calves started cramping really bad and I more or less couldn't run.

First half of the race was great, body felt great, ankle felt great, energy was sky high, pace was very comfortable and I was not working at all. At mile 2 I somehow got caught up with a serious dough head. Between miles 2-4 I bet he about ran me off the course 4-5 times. The last time a decided to throw an elbow up just to let him know I was there. He promptly apologized but I was still kind of ticked. At mile 5 we came up on another guy who was doing some crazy weaving back and forth so I decided to dump both of them at that point.  I was comfortably sitting in 6th until mile 20. Half split was 1:23:14 dead on where I wanted to be. I still felt fresh. Had a bit of a garmin incident right here but it didn't bug me too bad. I settled in on my pace and was just cruising. Mile 20 there is a bit of a hill and I had been fighting cramps for about 2 miles by then and it just really sucked at this point. I made it up ok, but it just kept getting worse. By mile 24 I was saying it would be easy still to get sub three but my calves had different ideas. So a pretty subpar race for me. I'm ok with the results. Wasn't sure how I'd do. I knew I hadn't done long runs like usual and no long tempo runs to speak of. Two weeks of more or less of nothing but spinning and a week before that of taking time off to heal up = not a really good race.

My ankle still feels pretty good, quads are great but my calves are still cramping as I sit here.

Not sure if I'm going to run the planned half in two weeks.