What ever it takes!

6:00 am.  Met Ryan at his house, I told him to find a flat 10 mile route to do a semi tempo run.  I wanted to try and simulate my Monday 10 mile treadmill run.  Found out it's much harder to do outside.  We seemed to either go to fast or to slow, never could hit our splits quite right.  After the first 5 miles of pretty fast pace we decided to do the second half at just a comfortable 7:00/mile pace, my leg was hurting still pretty bad and neither of us could really quite get into it.  Ended up doing 10.2 miles in 1:08:37 6:45/mile average pace.  Not exactly what I wanted out of my run this morning but I can't always get what I want I suppose.

5:00am.  Came to the realization that my leg isn't going to get better on it's own, today was a recovery day so I made it such.  30 minutes on the elliptical trainer, and then 1200M swim in the pool.  Did some leg presses and leg extensions on the machines in between.  I tried to keep my heartrate up on both the elliptical and swimming.

I've come to a strange place in my training, I've spent the last 16 weeks obsessing over 1 marathon and now I've realized I've put in the time and nothing I do at this point is really going to get me any faster.  I've almost written it off now, and know that what ever happens is what happens.  I've already starting just wanting to get it over with so I can move on to the next level, what ever that may be.

At the Airport now off to San Francisco again, definately going to just take it easy the next 2 weeks, try and get some relaxing runs in but mostly try and get my leg feeling better for race day.

5:00 am.  Back in SanFrancisco, Probably should have done the elliptical again today but I knew I would spend the day feeling sorry for myself it I didn't get my run in. 

Today was suppose to be a VO2 max day 3x1600's but when I woke up I knew my leg wouldn't be able to handle that.  Ran my normal route out over Fort Mason, pretty windy, misty, cool this morning, but felt good.  My leg was hurting but I managed through it, on the way back with a tail wind I decided to get a couple of Marathon Pace miles in so I ran from the Crissy Field rest stop to Fort Mason at 6:10 pace, and then when I got to the Embarkadaro street I did another 6:05 mile.  Oddly enough my leg hurts the least at marathon pace, maybe I should just go everywhere at marathon pace.

9.5 miles in 1:06:10.  7:00/mile average total run.  My hotel this week adds about 1/2 mile to my runs.

4:30 am.  Another "recovery" day so I decided to not push it and went to the hotel gym and did the elliptical machine for 1 hour.  It said I went 7, so I put down 7.  My leg definately likes the elliptical more than running, I feel practically no pain on the machine so it's probably a good choice to try and recover with.  I pushed pretty hard, set the resistance to 12 and tried to keep my heart rate above 130, which is very difficult on the elliptical I've found. 

I would like to get out and run tomorrow and Saturday but I guess it all depends on how my leg feels each morning.

4:30 am.  So I had an apiffany yesterday and decided what I needed was a compression sleeve to wrap around my calf.  So after work I went on a 4 mile trek through the hoods of San Francisco to find the only Sports Authority in town.  They had exactly what I had pictured in my mind so I tried it on in the store and wore it back to the hotel.  I could tell that at least for just walking it totally fixed the problem. I went to bed excited that I may be able to actually get a run in today without pain.  Woke up, put on my sleeve and headed out for my normal San Fran run.  No pain walking to the door, but as soon as I started running it hurt again.  I put up with the pain down Market street for 1 mile and then stopped to stretch out on the Embarkadaro.  After that the pain got bareable, I found that toe striking totally  alleviated the pain, luckily I had dabbled in toe striking on some short runs so I started doing that, wishing I had worn my Nike Free's.  Ended up going 10 miles cause I wanted to make it to the drinking fountain at Crissy Field.  On the way back I actually felt good enough to get my lamp post 100's in did 8 of those.

10 miles in 1:12:00  7:11/mile average.

4:30 am.  1 week to go, I'm going to take a good long break after this race I think.  This morning really makes me wonder what is going to happen next week, I start out my run thinking I wont even be able to finish 26 miles let alone PR.  Then after about 5 miles everything seems to loosen up and I can run just fine.  Also it seems the faster I go the less it hurts, so I guess as long as it holds up for 1 hour longer than today I'll survive.

13 miles out to the Golden Gate view point, really nice morning for a run, probably high 30's clear skys with really bright stars,  there was a low fog under the Golden Gate bridge so they had the fog horns going.  It's really a neat experience early in the morning.  My Garmin died 3 miles into the run,  probably not a bad thing, I need more runs without it.  All I know is it is 6.5 miles out to that point for a 13 mile total run.  Don't even really know how long it took.  I'd guess 7:15ish average.