Basic Training, Week Two

Monday, 11/1/2021

Rest day.  I don't feel too bad after yesterday's 3 miles, which is positive.  On the downside, a cold front has swept into the area, which doesn't have me super excited for the next few mornings.  But then, when you start a running program the last week of October, what do you expect?

Tuesday, 11/2/2021

31 degrees this morning.  There's really nothing to psych you up for a run like scraping off your car, which I had to do for the first time since returning to Chicago in May.  The 1.5 miles was not the easiest but I got through it.

Wednesday, 11/3/2021

26 degrees this morning!  It actually wasn't too bad on the trail with no wind and the sun out (it was funny by the end of the run to see "frost shadows" on the grass - spots where the sun had melted the surrounding frost into dew, but the grass in the shadow of a tree was still frost-covered).  The run itself was probably worse than the temperature - not that it was so super terrible, but by the end my legs had pretty well had it for the day and I developed some sort of stitch in my lower back on the left side just for good measure.  Hoping this is a temporary thing.  The last time I tried to kick back into running shape after a period off, I feel like it started more smoothly than this - but on the other hand, that was 15 pandemic pounds ago, so there's that much more pressure on my legs with each step.  Hopefully I will lose a bit of weight doing this and the problem will resolve itself eventually, but it might be a little rough for a while longer here.  Quite looking forward to Friday and Saturday at the moment.  Tomorrow might be pretty unpleasant.

Thursday, 11/4/2021

I had mentally prepared myself for the possibility that at some point there might be an injury that would hamper the process, but I have to say I didn't expect it this soon or where it ended up being located on my body.  The "stitch" that I mentioned yesterday turned out to be some sort of oblique injury - I don't know if it's a strain or an actual tear (hopefully the former and hopefully a mild one), but I was in substantial pain by Wednesday night.  This morning it had backed off a little, which is hopefully positive as far as severity goes, but deep breaths still cause that tell-tale sharp pain.  I'm honestly not even sure how exactly this happened - oblique injuries are generally caused by some sort of twisting, but this seems to have just happened in the middle of a run.  At any rate, I'm obviously not running today and tomorrow is a rest day, so that's a start for recovery days.  If things aren't noticeably better by Saturday I'll probably see what the doctor has to say.  This should be a recoverable injury that doesn't completely derail my hopes, but I might be doing a lot of walking for a while.  Maybe if I can lose a few more pounds during the hiatus, the running won't be as tough when I get back to it...

Friday, 11/5/2021

Rest.  The pain in the oblique has been kind of coming and going, though at no point has it been as bad as it was on Wednesday afternoon (you can tell that I wrote the Wednesday entry not long after getting back from the run, since things became much worse later in the day).  I've added some shoulder soreness which I think is probably acutely from awkwardly reaching across my car to scrape the windshield - probably need to invest in a longer scraper.

Saturday, 11/6/2021

This was supposed to be a 30-minute walk, but after an unscheduled rest day on Thursday and the overall plan severely in doubt at the moment, I decided to try putting a bit of distance on my legs - walking only - and seeing how they held up.  The answer so far - although let's give it a day - is relatively well.  Better yet, the oblique has been nearly pain-free so far today (I'm writing this at 3:15 pm), which hopefully indicates some sort of spasm or minor pull and not a tear or anything really significant.  I'm definitely still going to baby it for a while - I read that oblique injuries can stop being painful well before they're fully healed and thus are easy to re-aggravate - but at least my overall quality of life is going to be better without wincing every time I have to make a substantial movement or intake of breath.

The question is, where do we go from here?  I definitely don't want to rush back to running and even when (if?) I shift back to it I'm going to want to take it pretty slow.  This isn't that big of a deal for the half marathon target, since the half marathon in question doesn't have a time limit and also because 13.1 miles, while a lot, feels like something I could complete even right now if I had to.  (Heck, I did more than a third of one today!)  The same cannot be said for a marathon, and certainly not within a 6.5-hour time limit.  The good news on that front is we're still more than nine months from the potential marathon.  As of right now, I'm thinking: take the rest of the calendar year as a walking period.  I'll try to keep putting distance on my legs but more gently, along with some other stretching and strengthening exercises, and then after the new year - hopefully with a few pounds lost in that time as well - see about starting to pepper some running back in as long as I can hold up to it.  If it keeps being an issue I can at least walk the half marathon and fall back on the fact that I did do a marathon once in my life.

Sunday, 11/7/2021

This was supposed to be a 3.5-mile run, but instead I did a pretty easy 3-mile walk.  After yesterday's distance, I still felt pretty tired at the end of the day, so that might tell you something about my current levels.  Next week is definitely going to be an adjustment from what is "supposed" to be the training plan, but we'll see if I can make this work.

Basic Training, Week One

Monday, 10/25/21

In the Higdon plan, Mondays are rest days, so it almost feels like cheating to include this, but that's what's on his website!  Anyway, this was the day I labeled all the days in an Excel sheet, printed it out, and stuck it on the fridge.  So that's something.

Tuesday, 10/26/21

1.5 miles - 0.25 walk, 0.5 run, 0.25 walk, 0.5 run - in one of the local forest preserves.  13:37 average pace, which would be just under six hours over a marathon distance!  Kind of silly to think about that now, but on the other hand, unless I plan to do Honolulu again (which I don't, in large part because by the time of the 2022 version I'll be 40 already), pace does have some relevance.  In the end, though, I think this will end up being more about distance tolerance.  Yes, technically I tolerated the distance in 2011, but not really.  If I actually get to the point where I can "run a marathon" I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do it fast enough not to get timed out of other courses.

Wednesday, 10/27/21

3 miles in the forest preserve, again alternating between 0.25 walk and 0.5 run.  This time my average pace was 12:46, which was pretty good considering - nearly a minute faster than yesterday even over twice the distance (especially considering it was 12:39 until I had to walk 0.05 miles back to the car), and I feel like I was taking it fairly easy.  I did gas out kinda hard on the last quarter mile, but if this were easy from the start I wouldn't need to do it.  The next three days are much lighter before the next 3-mile run on Sunday, so we'll see how things feel by then.

Thursday, 10/28/21

1.5 miles, with the same 0.25 walk/0.5 run pace.  I'll probably keep doing that for at least a couple weeks unless I have a particularly good reason not to, so from here on out let's just assume that's what I did until I say otherwise.  My legs were not especially fond of me this morning, but I got through it, and the next two days are basically both rest days (30 minutes of walking on Saturday isn't nothing, but it isn't running), so let's see how things look on Sunday.

Friday, 10/29/21

On October 17 I did a 5K, my first in nearly two years (though I did do a virtual 10K in May of 2020).  For most of the next week, my ankles were pretty darn sore.  This week, things have not been nearly that bad during my down time.  So that seems like a positive.  This was a rest day and it was fine.

Saturday, 10/30/21

The next-easiest thing to a rest day is a 30-minute walk.  As I said on Thursday, that's not nothing, but it's certainly a lot easier to tolerate than anything involving a run.  I did a very straightforward 3 mph pace and it was no problem - definitely wasn't too sore or anything.

Sunday, 10/31/21

The training plan calls for the longest runs on Sunday, so this was the long run to cap the first week, another three miles.  (The Wednesday run was the same length, of course, but that run stays the same length throughout the duration of the 12 weeks while the Sunday run steps up to 6 miles.)  Things got a little tough energy-wise about halfway through, but I ate some Clif Shot Bloks during the 1.5-1.75 and 2.25-2.5 mile walk sections and that was enough to get me there.  Annoyingly, while my legs mostly feel not too bad in the wake of the first week, I'm starting to notice a suggestion of pain around the sesamoid bones at the base of my big toes, which in the past have been one of the more prominent pain points during my running.  As of now it's not painful so much as "the existence of that area of the body is registering on my nervous system," so we'll see how that develops.  It's not an unmanageable thing but boy would I rather not have to deal with it, although between that and, say, knee pain, I will take the former any day of the week.

Last Chance Saloon

On December 11, 2011, I finished the Honolulu Marathon.  I posted about it here.

On May 8, 2013, I posted that I would run another marathon.  I posted about it here.  In fact, it's easy to find if you want to read it, because it's literally the next post down.  That was nearly eight and a half years ago and although I've finished quite a few races since then - seventeen 5Ks, four 4-milers, a 5-miler, thirteen 10Ks (including two virtually), and even a 10-miler - I have yet to run another marathon.  Or even a half marathon.  At one point, I announced the intention to run a marathon during the week of my 35th birthday.  That was in 2017, and suffice to say it did not happen.

Which brings us to now.  I turn 40 in less than a year.  I wouldn't intend to suggest that the age of 40 is some sort of death sentence, but I do know that I feel like I am rapidly aging beyond the point at which I can just have some zany idea like "do a marathon" and then get myself somewhat quickly into acceptable shape for it.  40 is also an obvious milestone age and going into my 40s without being in terrible shape doesn't sound like the worst idea.  So maybe this isn't truly "last chance saloon," but if I'm ever going to run another marathon, at the very least I ought to start working on it now.

This morning I did the first running day of the Hal Higdon "base training" program to try and get into basic running shape.  That's 12 weeks.  Then, there's a 12-week half marathon training program that culminates in early April.  After that, it's the 18-week marathon training program.  And then, with any luck, a marathon - before my 40th birthday.

I doubt anyone is even reading this, but it's helpful to have some sort of accountability.  I'm thinking weekly recaps.  Whatever works.