Short term plans

I decided since I aborted my run at Afton that I should run on Sunday to see how the legs felt. Well, that worked out kind of, the kind of meaning that I did make a good choice at Afton. Karyn and I did a run/walk along the river bottoms. She could've run but I needed to walk about every 5-10 minutes. Ok, so maybe running on Sunday wasn't one of better ideas but I needed to justify my choice and I had hopes that running on level ground that it would be ok. Ok, wrong again, if nothing else though I got to use the Garmin, it is so cool to look down and see the mileage. The elevation stuff I am still getting used to it's cool too but it really is no surprise that I slow down going uphill. I did get SportTracks figured out so my link to Buckeye is re-established. I look forward to figuring out the other features.

The weird thing about the injuries is trying to figure out what exactly are my problems, the achilles issue I get, I torqued the right ankle and then stepped in a hole at Chippewa all within a mile or so, ran another 20 miles and strained it a bit. It is slow to heal and I have been slow to treat it so that all makes sense. The left ankle on the other hand has me mystified, I rolled that ankle too, yes within that same mile or so, ran the 20 miles and ever since my left foot and ankle have bugged me. Initially I figured I had developed plantar, Dr. K treated that and the pain went away, the ankle pain did not. But without the arch pain, I noticed it more. I guess that proves the hammer theory. What I have noticed is that when I extend or straighten the foot, it seems to catch and clicks somewhere on the inner side right below the ankle bone towards the toes. Kind of like it's stuck and then releases. It doesn't really hurt but it does ache at times and it's a little tender but not painful to the touch. When I run it starts out just as an ache and then I get jolts as I run, the longer I go the less aches and the more jolts. The achilles helps out my experience as it provides occasional jolts as well and then just tightens up after 5 or less miles which means less push off and an already slow runner goes slower as well as providing an increased number of jolts on every slight misstep. Hills are not pleasant with it but that I can deal with that for the moment by avoiding hills. Anyway, I will eventually figure it out or I will go back in to see Dr. K or someone else. For the moment I have decided to stay shut down until later in the week.

All of this thinking about my issues got me to thinking about Surf the Murph, thinking at least with regards to my running usually gets me in trouble but here goes.

If I only focus on one race can I actually apply myself to cross train, strength train and to slowly ramp my mileage up and stay healthy? So I am going to work on the diet, commit to a cross train methodology and see what happens. In the past I have said similar things and who knows maybe I won't follow through but this time I might as although Les is allowing 14 hours, 11 to 12 hours seems like a better goal and if I really got my act together who knows maybe even 10 to 11. For the moment, I will work on my alternate plans and then try to get back onto my running plan the week of the 13th. Heck that gives me almost a week to figure it out and then 10 or 11 weeks to train.