November started off in great fashion. Since I wasn’t overly enthused about my current Addidas shoes, I picked the brain of sub 10 hour Kona finisher, Erik Svans, about what shoes he uses and why. After some back and forth texts, I picked up a new pair of Nike Lunar Elite shoes. To break them in, I wore them around while doing errands or working outside. Their first true test was a 9 mile “fun run” on Monday. They felt great. Maybe it was the placebo effect, but they felt sooooo much lighter too. On Sunday, November 6th, I finished what was my absolute finest running performance EVER….an 18 miler with a 9:08 pace. The best part was that the run was mostly on trails too! I also accomplished a goal of mine, to cover 13.1 miles in under 2 hours. I was able to do it in 1:56. You can click on the link to look at my notes.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/127156229
After my awesome 18, I peeled off the following runs: 6, 6, 13, 9, 6 pace (8:13), and 10. My next run was scheduled to be my longest training run yet…20 miles. In fact, this was to be the second longest that I had ever run before with my IMAZ marathon being the longest. No need to rehash the details since I already laid it out in my notes. I appropriately called this run, “Shoulda Been 20, Almost 18 Mile Disaster”
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/130300166
As “luck” would have it, my training didn’t have me running for another 6 days and we were taking off to spend Thanksgiving at the family cabin too. This was the perfect time to just relax. No running, hiking, or stress on the knee for 6 full days. My Next run back was supposed to be 7 miles. I figured that I’d walk the first mile, jog the next, and take it mile by mile from there. I soon realized that my knee still wasn’t going to let me go at anything faster than about a 10:00 min/mile. As a result, I ended up “run walking” the entire distance. Towards the end, I was so completely bummed out and bored, I ended up walking the lines of the soccer fields to see what it looked like when I downloaded my data. I guess it was just some time for me to figure out what to do next and to have some fun at the same time. In retrospect, I should have called it quits after about 3 miles as I paid the price when I got home. I literally had to support my knee, from underneath, if I wanted to get up from a chair or bend it. I officially moved from “all systems go” to “code yellow” in terms of training and my attempt at a marathon in January.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/131952663
My new shoes:
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