Riding and running

I can't remember the last time I got a mid-week ride in, but I finally did today. It seemed like it was too warm to run, and I had already run two days in a row, so it was either sit in front of the tube or ride.
It was ride.

I didn't go far - about 17 miles - but the route to and through the Riss Lake neighborhood was pretty hilly and a better-than-average workout. I didn't try to race it, but I managed an average of 13.2 mph. Those 28 mph downhills really help the average.

So far this week I've got 58 miles in on the bike and 11.5 on foot. If you count Saturday as part of this week, my ride total goes up to 94. Alas, Saturday was last week.

The running is going pretty well since I started up again at the end of April. I've been averaging around 15 or 16 miles per week, and so far haven't had a run longer than 6.5 miles. I do them all pretty slowly to avoid aggravating  the foot injury that put me on the shelf for 7 months. Happily, it has given me no trouble at all.

Long layoff finally ends

After a layoff of  some 22 weeks, I finally got back on the road again twice in the past week. The hiatus was necessitated by a foot injury incurred the day before the Kansas City marathon last October, and exacerbated during the race. The injury - inflammation of a toe joint on the ball of my left foot - required several visits to the foot doctor, numerous sessions with the physical therapist, an a long period of just waiting for the discomfort to evaporate.

I planned to start running on May 1 no matter how I felt. But, the weather on April 29 was perfect and I had the time, so I decided to move the timetable up a bit.

While most of the discomfort from the injury is gone, my foot still gets pretty sore if I'm on it too long. Walking, oddly, hurts it, but I'd noticed over the last few weeks that running a few steps actually felt fine. For that reason, I was fairly confident that I'd be OK if I just took it easy.

 I set my goal at 4 miles and decided I'd be happy with any time, as long as it could qualify as running. I settled into a pace of around 11 min. per mile and just held that for the whole distance. I half expected some negative effects from the pavement pounding, but it never happened. I did 4.1 miles in 44:30, and boy, it was a great feeling to run again. I've spent hours in the gym on the machines, so my fitness level was pretty good, but I was post-marathon sore the next couple of days anyway. I loved it.

I was back out on May 1 for 4.2 enjoyable miles, and this time averaged 10:15 per mile. My plan now is to run  a couple times a week and keep the mileage low. I doubt I will enter any races until next year, if the recovery holds. With a 237-mile end-to-end Katy Trail ride coming up in October, it's all about the bike this year.

Plus an occasional run.

One little run

After a long layoff due to an injury, I finally ran a little bit today. And I mean a little - 2.5 miles.
Mainly, I did it so I'd know where my injury is in the recovery process before seeing the doctor. Results: not healed yet, but making slow progress.

In our last visit, the doctor and I kind of decided that if things weren't quite a bit better by now it might be time for a steroid shot.

As it turned out, the doctor who'd been seeing me was tied up in surgery, so I got a different doctor, a young woman who I'd never seen before. After examining my foot and asking a lot of questions she finally concluded that a shot wasn't the route to take, at least not yet. Seems it's a botox shot, and they wear off after about 6 months, so it couldn't be considered a permanent fix. Plus, it's not covered by insurance.

Her suggestion - and I was happy to take it - was a new kind of orthodic modification designed to take the pressure off the sensitive part of my foot. My problem is common: capsulitis. This happens when the joint on your second toe (where the toe is attached to the foot) just can't take the beating anymore and inflames. Seems I exacerbated the problem by running off all the protective padding on the ball of my foot (she said something about how this happens naturally to people at an "advanced" age). There's a lot of good information about this condition on the internet, including where I got the photo at the left (my foot is not nearly as perfect looking as this one). The red circle is where I hurt.

I've already tried two or three other modifications to the orthodic I use, and none of them did anything but make my foot feel worse. This one, though, is tolerable, and I'm going to stick with it and see how it does. Essentially, it raises the front part of my foot up with a pad just behind the ball of the foot. There's also an area cut out of the orthodic so that part of my foot doesn't touch much of anything under normal conditions.

I'm also going to start throwing in two or three short treadmill runs a week and see how I feel.

Marathon result

Conditions for my Kansas City Marathon were just about perfect.
- A challenging training regimen successfully completed.
- No training injuries
- The best possible weather conditions
- An experienced support crew made up of Kay and Justin.

Finishing the KC Marathon. Photo by Bill McClave.

The result: A very acceptable 4:04:31 that possibly could have been better if I hadn't been quite so greedy for the middle 17 miles of the race.
I started with the 4-hour pace group, and their help kept my pace to an average of 9:19. Two of those miles were actually in the 9:45 range. All I really needed to do was exercise some patience and run 9 min. miles pretty much the rest of the way.
What I did was run 14 of the next 17 miles well below 9 min. pace. Most of those miles were in the 8:40 range. Only three of the 17 were around the 9 min. pace (9:01, 9:02, 9:05). It all felt very good and natural.
That accounts for 21 miles and a projected finish comfortably below 4 hours. Unfortunately, this is where things started to get uncomfortable. See, there was this long climb and, well, I spend all my reserves doing it. The remaining miles were a grind. The 4-hour pace group caught me right about mile 23, and the 4:05 group about mile 25 (although I finished just ahead of it). I was cramping frequently during the last 3.2 miles, and especially in the last mile.
I have to conclude that if I'd just eased off on those middle miles I might not have flamed out in mile 22. I probably should have driven the course to get a better idea of that last big hill in the Hyde Park area. Even that hill wouldn't have been quite so significant if I'd just stuck closer to the 4 hour pace group.

Race team. Justin, Kay, Rob. Photo by Bill McClave.

A running buddy who's a few years older and has run 16 or 17 marathons also suggests that once you get over 60 those late-race challenges get much harder to conquer and recover from. That might be true.
I ended up 8th in my age division out of 26 runners. the first 6 finishers in my division beat 4 hours and the guy ahead of me beat my time by 2 min. I was 536th out of 1,462 marathoners, and the average finishing time for the whole field was just under 4:25.
I'm happy with the race, though, but at the same time glad it's over. I'm not particularly motivated to run another one right now - shorter races are certainly much easier. But who knows how I'll feel once I'm all healed up in a few weeks. There could there be an 11th some day.

Next: the marathon

Did my final training run Wednesday evening, a 3.4 mile jog through the neighborhood. From here on out it'll be total rest, except I'll probably stretch every day and may lift weights tonight. But no pounding of the legs on pavement.

The weather looks like it will be very good for the race, with the temperature in the upper 40s at the start. With luck, it will not get out of the 50s by the time I finish. On the injury front, my sore toe seems pretty much back to normal and probably won't be a factor. Thank you foot doctor.

I feel like I'm in pretty good shape and should have no problem finishing. The questions always are "How fast should I go" and "No matter how fast I go, will I wear myself out too quickly?" Historically, the answers are "I don't know" and "probably."

For those interested, results are supposed to be available online here, and may include splits. My bib number is 852.

Close call on injury

The title of this post projects a bit more alarm than the news is worth, but it's true I have an injury that suddenly on Wednesday threatened my ability to run the marathon on Saturday.

Several weeks back I broke the toenail on my right big toe. I can't remember how I did it, but it broke way back on the left side. When it did, apparently a little bit of the broken edge stabbed the skin under the nail, and over a long period of time - months, really - began to inflame the toe.

For weeks I felt no pain from the broken nail, but then beginning last week the toe started to feel a little sore. I attributed the soreness to a switch to new inserts, and since the discomfort was slight, I really didn't give it much thought. I never even look at my toe.

Then over the weekend I finally inspected the site, and discovered the area around where the nail broke was discolored and the toe was red. I cleaned it, treated it with antibiotics and hoped for the best. Then on Wednesday morning the toe was noticeably worse, and as the day wore on I was enduring considerable pain. I called the foot doctor, and he got me in Wednesday afternoon.

The doc cut away as much of the nail as he could, and said that while the toe was severely inflamed, there was no widespread infection. He suggested numbing the toe and cutting further to make sure there were no other problems, but when I asked him what kind of shape I'd be in for a marathon on Saturday, he came up with another plan. We'd stop where we were, because he thought he might have gotten all the broken nail, get on an antibiotic, and then get together next week if there was still a problem.

I'm happy to say that as of this morning  the toe is much better, and now I think I should be fine from that standpoint on Saturday.

So, for the first time in a long time I almost made it all the way through the entire training schedule without medical assistance. At least this time the problem wasn't caused by over-training.

Rest week

This week I am in full rest mode in final preparation for the Kansas City Marathon. There are just two short, easy runs scheduled. I did the first one today: 4.62 miles at an average pace of  9:58. The only other run is to be 3 miles at a very easy pace, probably something like 11 min. per mile, which I'll do on Thursday. In between I will lift weights a couple of times, stretch, and possibly ride the eliptical trainer.

Over the weekend I ran 13.1 miles on Friday and then 4.3 on Saturday. The Friday run was scheduled to be 12 miles, but once I got going I figured I might as well make it a complete half marathon. I didn't intend to run it fast, but as the run progressed, my pace fell naturally, so I just kept it up. I finished with a 1:57:06. That's a pretty good half marathon race for a person my age, much less a training run, and I was very encouraged by it.

Thinking about my strategy for the race on Oct. 20, I looked up how I ran my fastest marathon - 3:52:08 in Kansas City in 2008 - to see how I did it. That was a perfect day for running: cool but not cold and it never got warm at all. No rain, no wind. Apparently I was in pretty good shape. My watch stopped working after mile 8, so I don't have splits for the whole way, but I was officially timed at 2:00:44 for the first half marathon, and then finished up with a 1:51:22.

With that in mind, on race day I will shoot for a 2:01 opening half, and then hope for a negative split and possibly a sub-4-hour race. Last year there were only 19 men in my division in Kansas City, and only four of them beat 4 hours. I know I'm capable of breaking 4 hours, but I realize anything can happen in a marathon, so I'm prepared to take what the race gives me. But if everything holds together I just might surprise myself.