Good news, bad news

Good news: I'm jump-starting this blog as a chronicle of my attempt to run the Honolulu Marathon on December 11, 2011. That also means a name change; I'm going with "The Marathon Diaries" for now.

Bad news: more boring blogging from me!

So, the good news. Training starts June 11. I didn't want to go in completely cold so I went out jogging today when I got home from work; the temperature had dropped into the high 80s from a high of 93, and it was still relatively steamy when I stepped outside, but hey, Honolulu will be warm, right? (Although the marathon starts around 5 am specifically to deal with that fact.)

On the training page they say to run 30-45 minutes on Mondays and Wednesdays, do 40 minutes or so of no-impact cross-training on Tuesdays and Thursdays, rest on Friday, and then do the big run with the class on Saturday. (Sundays is more cross-training.) So, I figured, let's see if I can run anything like that on the first try.

Well, not quite. I was outside for 46:30 total, in the following breakdowns:

0:00-5:00: brisk walk, 0.33 mi
5:00-12:00: jogging, 0.75 mi
12:00-22:00: walking, 0.5 mi
22:00-30:00: jogging, 0.78 mi
30:00-40:00: walking, 0.5 mi
40:00-46:30: jogging, 0.66 mi

So 21:30 of jogging (though not consecutively) and 25:00 of walking. About 3.5 miles total, with about 2.2 of that coming from the jogging. (So I only need to do that 12 more times!) Could be worse, and actually the jogging felt like it was getting easier as I would start up again each time. Well, the cardiovascular part of it did. The part that did not makes up the real bad news...

I seem to have acquired a blister. Maybe midway through I could feel an irritation on the left bottom side of my right foot, apparently where it was rubbing against the edge of the insole. I tried to adjust this with no success and ended up soldiering through it to get home, but upon taking my shoe off I was greeted with a red spot of quite tender skin that, if it can't already be called a blister, certainly looks destined to be one. Now I have no idea what to do. I know I shouldn't run again, even in different shoes, until it heals - but how long is that going to be? And can I walk around much at all? I guess I can have Alma pick me up some of those moleskin doughnuts or something. But, this kind of sucks. And what does this mean for the future? I guess once the blister heals I can wear moleskin or something until the shoes are more broken in - I had to wear moleskin on the backs of my ankles for several weeks with the walking shoes I got last summer - but hopefully this is not the start of any serious trend that's going to put a massive crimp in my marathon plans before they've really even started.