Hartog’s Den

I’ve let my posts slip for the last few weeks, due to a lot of things changing in my life, most of which have been good.  There is one not so good though, and I’ll just say it…

I have to withdraw from running the marathon.

Why?  Because I made a stupid, boneheaded mistake, even when my intuition was telling me not to, I did it anyway.  Let me explain…

In the last three weeks, I started a new job and moved at the same time.  Starting a new job was a great feeling, as I’ve been basically unemployed since graduating in December.  The moving process took all of my evenings and weekends for a solid two weeks, and including the effort of starting a new job, I basically didn’t run for about a week and a half.  I didn’t have the time or the energy to get out onto the road.  This is the first half of the mistake.  The second half of the mistake is deciding that I still wanted to make up for the 20 miler that I missed.  I still had another 20 miler to do, and I probably could’ve gotten by just fine with just one 20 miler, but I was stubborn, and stupid.  My first run in a week and a half was 20 miles.  My intuition was telling me that this was a bad idea, but my stubbornness overrode my instincts, and now here I am with a stress fracture in my right foot, a re-aggravation of an injury from two years ago.

Needless to say, I feel like a total idiot.  I’ve dealt with so many injuries in the past years, and you would think that I would learn from those mistakes, but apparently not.  I’ve had Achilles tendonitis,  shin splints, muscles tears, neuromas (pinched nerve in the foot, it hurts), sprained ankles, sprained knees, hip injuries, you name it.  I’ve been in-and-out of doctors’ offices, gotten custom insoles for my running shoes for my flat feet, and gone through physical therapy.  I’ve been extremely cautious about re-injuring myself.  All it takes is one mistake (one BIG mistake in my case), to knock me off the road for two months.

Although I’m kicking myself, I definitely won’t call the training I’ve done in the last few months a waste.  The marathon race, in my opinion, is merely a celebration of the journey to get there.  The months of training, the hours upon hours on the road to get yourself into a condition to run 26.2 miles continuously is the real marathon.  I’ve run more miles more consistently in the last few months than I ever have in my life, and crested 40 miles in a single week for the first time!  I also lost over 10 pounds! Although I will miss the race, I’ve already hit some big milestones for myself, and after recovering from this injury, will be ready to try again!  I’m already looking at marathons for this spring, with the Spokane marathon or Coeur D’Alene marathons looking like top contenders.  Both are in May, and both are 90 minutes from Pullman, an easy day trip.  I will also attempt another fall marathon, perhaps trying Two Bear again, or maybe trying somewhere else.  This injury is a setback, but it sure as hell isn’t going to stop me!

I’m slacking with these updates, for which I beg forgiveness.  Please.  I’m sorry.  Don’t give me that look…  I missed two weeks worth of updates, which I will now try to detail here, although my memory is already fuzzy.  My mind kind of goes fuzzy anyway when I’m running, and when I’m not running too.  So the last two weeks are detailed here.  This week, which ends Sunday, will be talked about on Monday, and we’ll be caught up.  Ok?  Ok.

I hit 37 miles total for the first week.  The most that I’ve ever run in a week prior was 39, during the peak of my first marathon’s training schedule.  I picked a much tougher schedule this time around, and I’m definitely starting to feel the effects.  Sunday’s 15 miler was… less than comfortable.  The last two weeks of increased mileage have resulted in more fatigue than usual, and that fatigue hit me full force during the middle of the run, severely dropping my overall pace, and making the last few miles extra tiring.  I felt horrible after the run, and it took me a couple of days to recover.  The summary of mileage for the week:

Tues 6/30:  4.01 miles in 41:46 at 10:25 / mi.  Recovery after a long Sunday run.

Wed 7/1:  7.43 miles in 1:11:43 at 9:39 / mi.

Thurs 7/2:  4.03 miles in 41:05 at 10:11 / mi

Sat 7/4:  7.00 miles in 1:06:42 at 9:31 / mi

Sun 7/5:  15.08 miles in 2:40:29 at 10:38 / mi

Total for the week:  37.55 miles

The next week saw greatly reduced mileage.  I ended up taking it very easy, only running a few miles the whole week.  This was partially to recover from the week before, and to prepare for Saturday’s race!  I ran my first trail race since cross country in high school!  It was a hilly eight-mile jaunt through Brundage, a ski resort in McCall, ID on July 11th.

http://www.wildrockies.com/running/brundage_festival.php

It was small part of a much larger mountain biking competition, and there were only 22 runners.  The course was hilly and rugged.  I lept over tree roots, ran through creeks, and nearly twisted my ankle on some very inconveniently placed rocks.  I was pretty nervous about this race, because trail running is so much different than running on pavement.  I used this race as a gauge as a test for the trail marathon.  If this race ended up being really hard, I would have to make some big adjustments to my training schedule.

I lined up on the starting line with the 21 other runners, who all looked like they meant business.  Fit, outdoorsy, probably ran dozens of races like this.  I felt a sense of dread, and imagined myself crossing the finishing line in dead last, with the announcer saying, “And stumbling into LAST PLACE, the moron that actually thought he could run trails, and laughably decided to try to run a trail marathon is Ryan Johnson!  Let’s mock him everybody!”

The starting gun goes off, and we take off down the trail, through dense pine trees.  The trail was very narrow, so nobody could really pass each other for the first mile.  With the Tour de France on my mind, our tightly grouped line of runners felt like a peloton.  The course was beautiful.  Anybody who has grown up in Idaho around the mountains knows the feeling that I felt as I ran through forest and flowering meadows.  The air was thin from the mile-high altitude, and I could feel it through a slight burning in my chest, along with more labored breathing.  The first hill, also the largest and steepest, revealed itself as we turned a sharp corner.  At this point, living in Pullman paid off.  No run that I do in Pullman is ever flat.  In fact, I live near the top of a hill, so regardless of what direction I return from, I end my run by running up a hill.  I suddenly found myself dropping a large chunk of the group, and at the top of the long hill, found myself in 8th place out of 22.  Needless to say, I was surprised.  I was even more surprised when only one person passed me for the remainder of the race, putting me in 9th out of 22 people!

I felt pretty happy about the race, for the most part.  I finished, but felt pretty sore afterwards due to the rough trail.  I’m worried about the possibility of rolling an ankle, espeically as my leg muscles weaken towards the end of the race.  I suppose that’s part of the risk of doing this, but I can’t say that I’m entirely confident.  The only thing that I can do is finish the training and make the attempt!  Here’s the summary of the week:

Tues 7/7:  1.53 miles in 14:11 at 9:17 / mi

Thurs 7/9:  3.08 miles in 28:42 at 9:19 / mi

Sat 7/11:  Trail race!  8 miles in 1:20:10 at 10:00 / mi

Total: 12.61 miles