Scratch that

My legs are bothering me again. I think the climb from Bridge Street to Dodgeville was too ambitious. I can't afford to take any more time off so if I can't get my legs back under control soon, I'm going to have to pull out of the HM.

I just checked my last few reports. I haven't had a good run since the beginning of August. This is not good, peeps.

Not good at all.

Note to self

DO NOT eat an entire Pemmican bar 30 minutes before you head out for an 8-mile run. You will end up with horrible heart burn and nausea and have to call your boyfriend to come and pick you up after six nasty miles.

Seriously, I'm not even going to post my run statistics because it was so bad. I felt so awful that I was scoping out the bushes to see if I could find a secluded spot to go make myself throw up. I hate throwing up, so that never came to fruition. I would make a bad bulimic.

On the bright side, there was no sign of the lower leg issues I was having a couple of weeks ago. That's the only good thing I have to say about my run.

Yep, that's it.

One more

19.5 miles, average pace 14.4

I need new bike shorts, my butt is sore.

Catching up AGAIN

I'm back after a short hiatus. I had to put my running shoes on the shelf for 10-ish days due to shin splits or Achilles tendinitis or whatever it was that I had. In the meantime, I rode my bike like a fool.

I did a 17-miler on the 18th

Then a short 12-miler on the 19th

Finally a monster 40-miler on the 21st. I actually think it was around 42 miles, because I forgot to turn my Garmin back on after I made a short water stop. Whoops.

Last night, I picked up on my running schedule again, with a short two-miler. I thought I ran it at a fairly conservative pace until I uploaded my track from my Garmin and found that I ran my fastest two miles ever. Go figure. Anyway, my legs were much, much happier after their running vacation and, aside from the normal twinges here and there, I experienced no real pain or discomfort. When I got home I stretched a bunch and iced both lower legs for 20 minutes. I have a hunch that my leg issues are caused by tight calf muscles, which I can't seem to get rid of no matter how much stretching I do. I think I might start using the heating pad on them before my runs and see if that helps. I've had luck with that method in the past on my hip, maybe it'll work on my calves, too.

I have eight miles on tap for Wednesday. I'm a little bit concerned about this run as it'll be the true test to see if my legs have fully recovered.

Ooh, I almost forgot that I wore my new, fancy heart rate monitor on yesterday's run. My highest heart rate was 181 (going uphill) and my lowest was 153 (downhill). It seemed to hover right around 165-170 on the flats. This information would probably be more useful if I knew
how to interpret the results!

Shins are STUPID

I am having a really hard time keeping up with my blogging responsibilities. I suppose it's because my last few runs have been horrible because my shin splints are back to haunt me. Posterior shin splints, to be precise. Argh, what a pain they are - literally. After the crappy run I had on Monday I again gutted out six miles on Wednesday with numerous stops along the way just to muster up enough mental fortitude to keep going.

I decided to bag my one remaining run of the week - an 8-miler and replace it with a long bike ride instead. We were camping in Copper Harbor, so I rode from the Burma Road to Eagle Harbor. 28 miles at around 16 mpg. That's not so shabby for a bike newbie.

I debated all day long whether or not to run tonight. Since I only had two miles on the schedule and my shins had four days of rest, I finally decided to head out and see how things went. I opted for the super soft surface of the Chassell railroad trail, one of my favorite routes from last summer. My shins were a little tender and burned the entire way, but it wasn't too bad. The soft surface helped quite a bit. So did the Ibuprofin I took before I left. Maybe the pre- and post-run stretching, too. I'm also hoping the six ice packs that are wrapped around my legs at the moment help as well. If those things don't work, I'm really hoping the new shoes and insoles that I have coming on Wednesday will take care of everything. I'm trying everything else, might as well throw some money at the problem, too.

Sucky short run

I had a two-mile run last night which, considering the short distance, sucked big time. I was having some discomfort in the Achilles area of both legs, but mostly the right. I'm pretty sure this is from my run on Saturday. Since I do the majority of my running on the flat surface of the road, my legs aren't conditioned to handle the uneven surfaces of a logging road for six miles.

I iced and massaged both legs after my run and took a healthy dose of Ibuprofin. Hopefully that plus my day off today will allow my legs to recover for my seven miler tomorrow. If not, I'll just push it to Thursday.

The weekend report

We were constantly on the go this weekend, which didn't leave me with much time for blogging. Once again, it's time to play catch-up.

Saturday was the Copperman Triathlon. James picked me up at 5:30 and dropped me off at the head of the Burma Road so I could start my 8-mile run. My grand plan was to run the Burma-Manganese Road to Copper Harbor (about 4.75 miles) and then pick up the remaining 3-ish miles running around downtown. So, after James went careening, crashing and crunching rally-style down the road to supposedly "..scare off any bears so they won't eat you...", off I went and immediately encountered a fork in the road. This was a tri-directional fork because I had three choices - left, right, or straight. I didn't remember that from any maps so I chose right. BZZZZT wrong choice! Unfortunately, it took me three miles to decide that I was absolutley not on the Burma Road. Then had to double back to get to my starting point. Fortunately my little gps watch has a navigation feature on it which tracked my route into the bush and all I had to do was keep an eye on it to get out. Once I got back on the road, I was at the six mile point and it's almost exactly two miles to downdown Copper Harbor from the Burma Road. So, despite my major navigational snafoo, I was able to complete my 8-miles.

Once I pulled my track off of my gps, I was able to see where I made my mistake. I definitley should have taken the fork to the left.

I've now discovered a neat little feature which allows me to create a route and upload it to my watch. While it doesn't give turn-by-turn directions, it does provide a navigational route line to follow. Too bad I didn't think of this before Saturday. Bah.

I made it to the start of the race with 30 minutes to spare. Josh showed up shortly after that and we cheered James and my high school pal Tina (Hi Tina!) on. Tina ended up winning the women's division (YAY!!) and James was much improved over last year. Here's some photos and videos of the race: 2008 Copperman After a short post-race party at Zik's we headed to the KBC for more celebrating, dinner and shopping for a new swimsuit for Josh.

The Otter River Pneumatic Yachting Club's Fifth Annual Gala and Regatta was on tap for Sunday. Since the afternoon was going to be filled with massive quantities of beer and food, I decided to create a calorie deficit and ride out to James's house. I was able to maintain an average speed of 17 mph to Chassell, which dropped once I started to hit the hills. In all, I was able to cover the 25-ish miles in an hour and fourty-five minutes. I guess that's pretty good - I think it worked out to an overall average speed of around 15 mph. We had a great time tubing. It seemed like the river was faster this year compared to others. We had four newbies on the trip who didn't have proper tubing equipment and their rafts looked like swiss cheese when we were done. I think all the newbies have experiences like that. I certainly did, and the following year I got a proper tube. Live and learn.

That's it!