This week didn’t turn out as badly as I thought it would have. My right heel was in such a bad state, I wasn’t expecting to be able to run at all. It turns out that on Monday, my heel felt perfectly fine. I was able to walk normally and there was no pain or discomfort. I have to assume that the combination of rest and the anti-inflammatories did the job. I decided to continue to rest on Monday and see how the heel felt on Tuesday morning since it feels worse in the mornings.

On Tuesday morning, my heel still felt great. I decided to do a 3 mile run in the early afternoon. Again, there was no pain and I was able to run. I had to then travel to Louisville, KY on business that night.

Louisville was cold with the lows around 32-33F. I decided to try a longer run on Wednesday morning. I did 5 miles in the coldest weather I’ve run in since last winter. It was around 35F. My heel continued to feel perfect. It was also very satisfying getting up at 5:30 am to run in that cold weather.

Today, back in TX, I did an easy 4-mile run and since my heel now seems to be healed, I’m planning to resume my full training schedule from tomorrow.

In the end, I only ran 12 miles for the week, but I’ll take that. It’s a lot better than zero miles!

Posted by derek as Training, Marathon, Cowtown at 8:34 AM PST

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This week has been terrible. As noted in my previous post, I did the 12-mile run on Sunday, but I haven’t been able to run at all since then. The back of my right heel is still in just as much pain as it was on Tuesday.

I decided to go to urgent care yesterday to have it x-rayed just to ensure it wasn’t fractured. After all, my heel has never given me this much trouble and what pain I’ve had there in the past was only if I actually hit in on something accidentally, and even then, that pain would go away after a few mins. The doctor said I had a spur, which I knew (or suspected), but he said he couldn’t tell if it broke off. He said he saw a slight line, but the x-ray needs to be read by a radiologist to be sure. I wouldn’t know the results until some time next week.

For now, I can’t walk without a sever limp and I now find myself hopping a lot to move around.

I’m now taking anti-inflammatories which I started yesterday. I know I should probably have started earlier in the week, but I was convinced the pain was going to go away quickly as it has in the past. My hope is that it will be the only one and I can resume running after that.

For now, I know I can’t run and I suspect this coming week will be the first week ever since I started running that Iwill not log a single mile of running!

Posted by derek as Training, Injury, Marathon, Cowtown at 8:33 AM PDT

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This week was a great week and start to my marathon training. The weather has been great which I think is a huge contributing factor. All I need now is for the next 17 weeks to be like the last 2 weeks!

I think I finally have my diet under control…at least for 5 consecutive days so far. In the recent months, whenever I tried to control my diet, I would only last 2 days. What I started to do was to track everything that went into my mouth. In the past, I would track the major meals, but end up eating a lot of smaller snacks that I never bothered to track.

From now on, I will try and summarize my week’s training in a table as follows:

Posted by derek as Training, Marathon, Cowtown at 7:31 AM PDT

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I now know what my placement was within the marathon.

Of the 35,000 starters, I placed 20,158.

Among the males, I placed 12,490

In my age group (35-39), I placed 2,379

Posted by derek as Races, Chicago, Marathon at 6:33 AM PDT

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Now that Chicago is over, I looking at my options for redemption. If I were properly trained, I would have probably tried the Dallas White Rock Marathon in early December, but I think I need to start a new training cycle. I did a 24-week plan for Chicago, but I think I want to do an 18-week plan this time around. I think the shorter plan will help me with my motivation, although I think I’m pretty motiviated after Chicago.

If I give myself 1-2 weeks to recover, an 18- week plan will take me towards the end of February. I don’t want to have to spend a lot of money traveling, so I think my current options are:

• The Cowtown Marathon in Ft. Worth on Feb 23, 2008 - This one is local so no traveling would be involved.
• The Austin Marathon on Feb 17, 2008. Austin is within driving distance and I could probably get away with just having to spring for 1 night at a hotel.
• The A1A Ft. Lauderdale Marathon on Feb 17, 2008. I telecommute for my company which is in Ft. Lauderdale and I’m back there every other month or so. I could actually time one of my trips to coincide with the marathon and thus not have to pay any travel expenses.

I’m actually having a hard time deciding which one to run. The good thing is that I can actually wait until the end of the year since the fees don’t go up until then and it is unlikely the marathons would fill. Each of these have pros and cons. Some of the factors I’m looking at are:

The Cowtown and Austin seem to be quite hilly. I’m trying to find out which, if any, will have pace groups as I think that will be important to me unless I eventually find a way to properly pace myself without any help. The Cowtown and A1A are definitely small marathons that seem to have around 600-700 runners.

The weather should be within my ideal range at all 3 marathons.

I’ll keep doing my due dilligence, but I would certainly appreciate feedback from anyone that has run one of these 3 marathons in the past.

Posted by derek as Training, Marathon at 10:04 PM PDT

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