One Foot In Front of the Other

The Chicago Marathon kicked me in the shin (or, more accurately, stomped and then popped my ankle joint capsule) and never looked back. But I have looked back, and I feel awfully dissatisfied. So a spring marathon is the only way to turn a bad race into a valuable learning experience.

Training began two weeks ago, and the running continues despite ridiculously stupid cold temperatures. Yesterday was the Super Bowl 5K and I’ll provide a race report tomorrow, because today’s I’m going to focus on my 11 miler Saturday.

Very much wanting a good run because I would be running for time, I was less than thrilled to see snow descending all day Friday. And it wasn’t a heavy snowfall, just the kind that lightly blankets cleared sidewalks and causes all kinds of slush—translating into a slow run due to poor traction. That left two undesirable options. First, an 11 mile treadmill run. Oh, painful. Or, running laps at my gym (only five laps per mile). I chose the 55 lap option. To help keep my sanity, and keep count of which mile I was on, I alternated my music on and off, with the exception of the last mile (which I kept the music on).

Reviewing my splits, I can tell when I was listening to music. Also, my goal for this run was to average between 8:00/M and 8:30/M. My splits went like this: 7:25, 7:19, 7:41, 7:36, 7:41, 7:40, 7:54, 7:36, 7:41, 7:32, 7:06. Well, so much for sticking to my goal pace.

Overall I felt great, and I was very surprised to see my splits. However, runs like this usually come at some cost…and my cost was one bloody toe on my left foot and one huge and crazy painful blister on my right (I’ll post pictures later because I know you want to see them).