Monday, April 13, 2009

The Good, the bad and the ugly???

First, congrats to all who participated in the inaugural Zumbro 100k and 100 miler, the reports and pictures sure make it look like a lot of fun, maybe next year?

Now for this post I decided to steal the title from one of my favorite westerns as it best describes my weekend.

The Ugly, my plan was to take a 1/2 day off from work on Friday and get in 3 loops at Murphy. Good plan, but a terrible result. I only made it 10 miles when I pulled the plug. I was dead, the legs had no energy, the back hurt, nothing was going right. After a terrible and somewhat painful first loop, I convinced myself to go out for the second loop, I walked for 5 minutes to try and get my act together. It only got worse. I ran easy for another 5-10 minutes and finally gave up. I hobbled back and thought to myself that the folks running Zumbro would look like I looked, minor difference they would be finishing a 100 mile event and I was finishing just 10 miles, ouch. I thought long and hard about Chippewa and how miserable that would be if I felt like this. One of the reasons I aborted was the reality that this run was going to do nothing whatsoever to help me there. I am in mediocre shape and this run won't help.

The Bad, I ran with Karyn on Saturday, we again ran the Big River Regional trail into Fort Snelling along River Road through Minnehaha Falls and back. I felt not so good to start the run but after Friday, I had to do this run. As it turned out, I felt ok, not at the start mind you but after a few miles I started feeling almost normal. So why was this the bad, well, I wore my Rucky Chucky's and I developed a nice blister on the top of my foot and felt like I was getting poked in the ankle from something. Weird place to blister and a weird pain in the ankle, what if this was Chippewa, that weirdness might be a real problem as this was only a 14 mile run. Another reason it was bad, Karyn struggled much like I did on Friday, so maybe it was just a bug of some sort that we both had.

The Good, after eating too much candy and then too much brunch, my system finally recovered and I decided I still had time to get in a quick run in Lebanon Hills. I got there around 6:45 PM, I wanted to run at least 5 miles and thought about doing 7. One minor problem was I didn't bring a headlamp and I was flirting with the sunset. So, I decided to take it a mile at a time, sure enough when I got a couple miles out, I could see that darkness would be a problem for 7 miles so 5 it was. It was about then that I thought to myself that I felt good and had been running fairly hard. I told myself to finish it up even harder. I actually did keep a reasonable hard pace and felt good the entire time. So this gave me hope, maybe I still have a chance for a decent day at Chippewa, all I want to do is beat last years time and I gotta believe I can do that as long as it doesn't snow, I do hope that it doesn't snow, I really hope it doesn't snow, who knows maybe it will be hot.

So despite a lousy final long run there is still a slight ray of hope for Chippewa not being a disaster, regardless I will enjoy the course and as long as there is at least one cold beer waiting for me at the end, it should all work out just fine.

1 comment:

Londell said...

some days are just our day... other are not. Sounds like you got them all in a short period. We have to get out soon?

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