Week 5 update

5 weeks down, 13 more to go...

Quick Stats:

Miles Run - 30 (128 total)
Holes in socks - 1
Blisters from previously mentioned hole in sock - 3
Number of socks bloodied by blisters from hole in sock - 2 (so far)

All in all, it was a good week. Had some great weather to motivate me to get outside and keep going. My work schedule wasn't too intense, letting me stick to my program for once and not have to worry about rearranging the workouts to fit with my crazy life. Now I get to look forward to this week, which is another easy recovery week. The running life is good.

That said, I did have my first of what will probably be many "Oh Crap!!" moments. This came about 11 miles into my 12 mile long run. The first 10 miles felt great. I took off probably a little faster than I should have (averaged about 9:15/mile when I had been doing about 9:30ish). But last weeks 11 miler felt great, so I thought, "why not?" Well, I'm old and out of shape is why not. Around mile 11, that all too familiar ache started to creep up in my right knee. When I was 15, I had a pretty nasty knee injury from playing soccer. Luckily, it never required surgery, but it still flares up from time to time, especially when running more than 11 miles. Since until now that wasn't much of a regular thing, I just learned to deal with it. Of course, instead of just shrugging it off and grumbling a little about the ache in my knee, I nearly started to cry. Not from the pain, but more from the overwhelming thought that if I can't even run 12 miles without it hurting, how will I ever run 26.2? Then the little optimist in me popped out and told off the evil nagging naysayer on the other shoulder and told it to shut up. I did a half marathon last year when I wasn't in nearly as good of shape and it didn't bug me then. It's been a rough week, training wise, so my body is way more fatigued going into this run than it will be going into the marathon. I took 15 seconds off my mile time and killed the first 10 miles. When I finally got home after that last mile which seemed to last an hour, I plugged in my GPS watch and saw that I ran that last mile in just 9:17. I might be able to survive this afterall.