This was a tough one. Coming off of my 44 mile week last week, I was surprised that I felt pretty good. I went out for my Monday run as planned, and then the shin pain hit. I woke up Tuesday morning to a left shin that was very bothersome. I took a few unplanned rest days this week and did lots of icing and stretching to try and get my shin feeling better. I’m not happy about missing mileage, but I’ll do what I have to, to get to the start line in one piece. I have been in training for 16 weeks now, which is a long time. I am kind of ready for the race to be here already.

Monday- 6 mile run on some new-to-me trails in Radford. I had fun exploring some new trails, but was disappointed to find that they weren’t as long as I thought. So I ended my run back in a familiar park. I finished feeling good and was still on top of the world from my 20 miler.

Tuesday- Rest day. This was a planned rest day, but I also woke up with pain in my left shin that hurt every time I took a step when I walked. I was surprised to have a pain like this come on so quickly, without any warning. It immediately had me worried, of course, but I’m not sure if it was just a delayed reaction to my previous week of highest weekly mileage ever.

Wednesday- Unplanned rest day. My shin was still bothering me, so I opted for a rest day in lieu of my planned 6 mile run. My shin was feeling a bit better from Tuesday, and I continued to stretch and ice.

Thursday- 6 miles at a surprising 9:57/mile pace with Barry on the roads around our house. My shin was a bit bothersome during the first mile, but it was my calves that were on fire during most of the run. Lots of extra stretching went on afterwards.

Friday- Rest day. Normally I would have made this my third weekday 6 mile run, since I took Wednesday off, but my shin was bugging me again when I woke up so I took another day off. I spent my workday with a compression sleeve hidden under my work pants. You never know what kind of compression us runners might be hiding under our work clothes.

After work I spent the evening icing and resting my shin, and wearing compression socks, in the hope of doing my 14 mile long run as planned on Saturday morning.

Saturday- My shin was feeling okay when I woke up in the morning. I got out to the trail and took my first few steps, and knew I wouldn’t be running 14 miles as planned. Stabs of pain shot up my lower left leg with every step. It dissipated a bit, but not enough to keep me from turning around at the one mile marker and heading back to the truck. My 14 mile run turned into a two mile run. I shed a few tears as I got back to the truck, wondering “what now??” I went home, iced my shin, had breakfast and took a shower, and then climbed back into bed and cuddled with the dogs.

That’s 220 lbs. of dog in bed with me. I read while they slept.

Up until this point training has been going really well. I was on cloud nine after last week’s 20 miler, which went better than I could have imagined. Now it feels like that cloud just dissolved and I plummeted back to Earth and hit the ground hard. I’m upset and I’m not sure what to do. Clearly my upcoming final peak week (which is supposed to be this week) is not going to happen. I’m worried about what this means for the fate of my first marathon. I know there’s a good chance I’m going to have to severely cut my mileage back in order to make it to the start line. But how is that going to affect my ability to complete the race?

Sunday- Loaded my bike into the bed of the truck (my first time doing that myself) and went for a ride on the New River Trail.

I ended up riding a little over 17 miles. It felt good to be out doing some form of exercise for an extended period of time, but I was still feeling bummed about my run. The trail was gorgeous, though. I even found the iconic New River Trail trestle bridge that they like to use in all of the pictures advertising the trail.

Just one more picture, I promise. This part of the trail has some spectacular views of the New River. The trail is a cut out on the side of a mountain. On some parts of this stretch you have the mountainside going straight up on one side and on the other side it drops straight down to the New River. You definitely have to pay attention, because if you ride off the trail towards the river it will be a quick drop with a sudden stop.

The good news is my leg felt good while riding, which means biking is a viable option until my leg feels better. The bad news is my leg was pretty painful when I got off the bike, but as I walked around some the pain did subside a bit.

Total Miles: 14 miles (it hurt me to type that)

This week’s schedule (final peak week):
Monday: 8 miles
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: 8 miles w/ 5 @ MP
Thursday: Rest
Friday: 8 miles
Saturday: 20 miles
Sunday: Rest

Did you briefly think I went and ran a race without telling you I was going to? If so, then I fooled you! Plus the race isn’t until tomorrow, so if you did think I ran a “secret” race today, I fooled you twice!

I thought I would borrow an idea from Deb’s blog and recap a previous time I have run this race on the weekend it’s being held. I think it’s such a neat idea she had to do that, and hopefully she doesn’t mind my borrowing! I don’t remember as many details from my races as she does, though. (Although the journey to the start line could be a race report on its own. Hang tough)

We are traveling back to October 2011, and my first race after a roughly one year hiatus from running. I don’t know why I took that year off. I graduated from college, started work 10 days later, got married a month later, and then was in training for 3 months for work (and was out of town every week). It’s no excuse, but running just kind of fell by the wayside. In March 2011 we traveled to Virginia Beach and I watched Barry run his first full marathon (Shamrock Marathon). Spectating that race and feeling that excitement was the final push I needed to get back into running.

Naturally I went home and started searching for races. I found the Richmond Half Marathon, which would take place in November. I signed up for the half, Barry signed up for his second full, and I sat down and devised a training plan that would begin at the end of June. A couple months later, I realized the Army Ten Miler lined up perfectly with my training plan, but it was sold out. Barry said he wasn’t interested in that race, so I stalked the transfer boards that ATM had set up for one race entry. It was intense and the demand was high!

Finally, I got a bib and I was in! My first race back was going to be the Army Ten Miler and I was thrilled. For me, the ATM was just one of those “bucket list” races I really wanted to do. It probably had to do with the fact that I grew up outside of DC so the thought of running a race through DC sounded like a lot of fun. I had no idea what I was in for.

Barry and I traveled up to my Dad’s house the Friday before the race. We went to the expo on Saturday, which was held at the DC Armory. It was very crowded at the expo, which would end up being the theme of the weekend.

Race morning arrived and we headed to the metro station to catch the train into DC. I was really worried about the metro trip in, because the metro stations do not have public restrooms. As our train arrived at the first stop, the restroom became the last thing on my mind. I could not believe the number of people getting on the train! It just increased from there, until it got to the point where the train would make a stop and no one could get off or on, because both the train and platforms were so crowded. My poor dad was also trying to navigate his bike through this mess. I think part of the problem was that there were a few trains shut down for maintenance, but it was out of control.

When we finally arrived at our stop, Barry and I were able to squeeze off of the train, but my dad was stuck with his bike and had to ride the train to the next stop. It was kind of scary getting out of the metro station. It was overcrowded and people were getting squished up against each other, because the escalators were still running but there was nowhere to go. As you exit the metro you have to swipe a card and wait for the barriers to open so you can walk through. This was causing a major bottleneck, and they later opened the gates to let people just get out.

As soon as we got out of the metro station, I located a porta potty. Then I kissed Barry goodbye as I headed for the security line to get into the runners staging area for the start. I made it through and had time for one more quick stop at the porta potties (which were numerous within the staging area) and then joined my corral and the throngs of runners.

I warned you that just getting to the start of this race deserved a recap of it’s own! The race started near the Pentagon and before I knew it we were off! Around mile two I saw my dad standing at the end of the Memorial Bridge. I hollered for him, but he missed me because it was so crowded!

Where’s Waldo??

And then I proceeded to wander aimlessly through the finisher’s area trying to find my dad and Barry. We hadn’t set up a spot to meet and it was so crowded. I finally asked a stranger to use his phone and got a hold of my dad, and was able to meet up with him. Then I used his phone to touch base with Barry, who was still at finish line. It was chaotic and not what I needed after running 10 miles.

Touching base with Barry. I’m pretty sure this is what I looked like to the nice stranger who let me use his phone to call my dad.

We are professionals when it comes to smiling for pictures. I finished in 1:42:16 and wrote the following in my running log: “Had a pretty good race- ran the entire way w/ a pretty even pace; very crowded getting there and on the race course; 10:13 pace.” That about sums it up. Maybe I just should have used that as my race report??

Last night I was able to get out for my 6 mile run as planned. My shin continued to feel good all day during work, so after work Barry and I headed out for a run on the roads around our house. It had been a little while since Barry and I ran together (not counting his biking alongside me while I ran last weekend), so I was excited he wanted to run with me. My calves were on fire within the first 15 minutes of this run, but they often do that after I’ve done a lot of foam rolling. Around mile 4, I stopped and stretched them while Barry stopped for a bathroom break at soccer field we were running past.

You can almost pretend the mountains on the horizon are the ocean

It’s a twister, Auntie Em!

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It looks like the government shutdown is over, for now. Hopefully we don’t go through this again in January. There were so many people affected by the shutdown, and at one point it looked like nearly 30,000 runners were going to be affected with the potential cancellation of the Marine Corps Marathon. I’m sure other races were affected.

One in particular that I know of was the Grindstone 100, which was set to take place through the George Washington National Forest in VA starting on October 4. Imagine being trained up to run 100 miles and then having the race canceled the week beforehand. I came across this interesting article about a group of ultra runners from the Richmond area who decided to make their own ultra. Spoiler alert: no, they didn’t go out and run 100 miles. But they did each run 30+ miles as a training run for the next race in the “Beast Series.” Their way of sticking it to the man!

It has been gray and drizzly here since last week.
What would you do if you were trained to run 100 miles and the race got canceled in the days leading up to it?

Holly posted about “bad bloggers” which got me thinking if I’ve ever referred to myself as one. I did a search on my blog, and it looks like I never have. Although I have stated that I committed a “blogging fail” by never taking a single picture at a race back in May. I did manage to remember to snap a picture of the finish line… as they were tearing it down. And I got one of Barry accepting his age group award. But the fact that I brought my camera and didn’t take a single picture until well after the race was run is a fail in general, even if I didn’t have a blog.

Today was a rest day from running. I woke up this morning with some pain in my left shin that has me a bit worried. The ridiculous part is I’m not worried that I have possibly injured my body, I’m worried that it may impact my running.