Monday, September 16, 2013

Crunch Time

Things are getting close, and by that I mean the Toronto Waterfront Marathon is not that far away and yours truly is a bit nervous about his fitness level. After a full month off (July) due to issues with the Achilles I not only am really behind in terms of training, but I continue to deal with soreness in the left Achilles, which is worrisome to say the least.

Nevertheless, I continue to work with a massage therapist to relieve the tension on the tendon, I've started to stretch more religiously than ever before and attempt to do at least one solid 20 minute routine per day, and I am also doing my best to train as my body will allow.

Case in point, after running either to or from work every day last week I woke up Saturday morning and my Achilles was having none of it. In the past I would have toughed it out and trained anyway, but this time I decided not to beat myself up too much and took the day off. I knew that with just 5 weeks left to go I had to do my first of three test runs the following day. Test runs? Yes, I need to test my ability to cover 42.2km by doing a few longer runs over the next three weekends so that I can both build confidence, test my injury, and give my body some time to recover in the three weeks prior to race day. Yesterday was the first of these test runs and my plan was to run "at least 20km". Next week I will run "at least 25km", and the week after, "at least 30km". If I can get through these three, I figured, I'd be in a good place to manage the full marathon distance on race day.

So, I went out with more than a bit of trepidation as my Achilles was still barking a bit. These days I make sure to walk the first kilometre as a warm up as I am getting "old", and this time I was definitely unsure of what the run would be like as the walk wasn't exactly pain free. It was ok, but that's the best I can say about it. The other tough thing about this run was the mental boredom of the route I chose. Given the Achilles situation I thought it prudent to stay close to home and simply ran laps of a large city block relatively near my home. Boy is that boring!!! The lap measured a little more than 2km and it is not what one would call "picturesque". Anyway, I started off easy and settled into a good rhythm after a few clicks. I ran this way for what seemed like forever! (Though it certainly WASN'T and feeling this way about the distance I did cover makes me a bit worried about being able to complete the Marathon.)

In the end, the results were rather positive. I will reserve judgement on whether or not I will be able to complete the race until after this series of test runs are complete, but the first went rather well especially when compared to the Half Marathon I ran in early May in Pittsburgh:


Onwards and upwards I guess. After all, it's crunch time!

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