Of Mice and Marathons

PM: 15.5 miles, averaged about 7:37

40' Aerobic Builder + 45" Strides

Covered just a whisker under 10k, so 6:27 average. After a 6' jog back to the park I did 6 x 45" strides at 5k effort

Splits: 6:29, 6:43, 6:26, 6:27, 6:20, 6:20, 6:13 (for the partial)

30' up/~28' down

I ran this on a ~2-mile loop in the neighborhood across from us that leads to the park in an attempt to change venue (I run the same route every day even for workouts). It worked okay. Mile 1 was suprising and mile 2 was confusing. Much faster than last weekend and closer to the paces I am used to for the 8-mile version of this workout. Effort was slightly up from the previous week, but I felt I had a decent rhythm even if my stride felt clunky.

This upcoming week is a recharge week of all easy runs of 35'-65' (likely 65') and a easy 2-hour run. As it is the last week of classes, this is timely.

PM: 7.5 miles, averaged 8:39

Felt good. Legs were surprisingly normal. I saw what I thought was a cat in a tree, but then I thought maybe it was an owl, and I finally decided it was a racoon. My eye sight isn't terrible (I wear glasses for TV, driving, and distance) but not while running. It was dark, but I am thinking I need to get my eyes checked. It's probably been 7 or 8 years.

PM: 7 miles, averaged 8:39

Ran to the park and instead of doing my 1-mile loops I went off into the woods and ran the trails. I haven't been doing this because they are very small loops and formerly were not well marked. As I recall there is some single track but I couldn't even find it. Recently a group of (I assume Boy Scouts) put in some trail markers, which helps. Still very flat and the trails are wide, but the trees provided a good wind block. I might run them more to see if I can get the pattern. The young folks use these for part of the cross country course. Not much of a cross country course without a single hill.

Kind of an anxious end-of-semester mess even though it is better than most semesters as I am no longer a student and not writing a dissertation.

Cutback week continues. Doing a workout in the wind would not have been fun today.

Unplanned day off.

Off.

Off.

Felt the slightest indication of Morton's neuroma the other day when I stepped down just right. I took Tuesday off just because I wasn't feeling life and needed to work. More or less the same yesterday, but I was also more concerned about my foot as I have felt it walking here and there and a bit today and I am favoring it even though it is not consistently an issue.

I gave the foot a little pinching and prodding and the nerve is definitely inflammed or locked up with fluid or whatever the preliminary stages are, so I am not messing with it. It's an incredibly painful condition when it goes full on. I had this issue in early 2011 (January to early March as I recall). At times it was hard to walk.

As near as I can tell the culprit is dress shoes and walking on steep downhills on concrete. I highly doubt it is running related (or at least running caused) as mileage and intensity have been lower than they have in many years and I ran a lot of uphill and downhill in Philadelphia (including the 2015 year being just shy of 4000 miles).

I will try to cross train, something I have never done during an injury. I am still not entirely sure this thing is going to go south, but if it does it can be extremely hard to overcome because even walking can irritate it. If it is, this will be my first sidelining injury since late Ocotober/early November of 2013, when I did some foolish things and got what I deserved.

PM: 52' of treadmill walking @ 15%

I listened to two episodes of 99% Invisible, a student recommendation. The first one was on infrastructure (roads primarily) and the other was on the development of how car manufacturers began to focus on safey as a concept. In the early days it wasn't part of the design.