Yesterday was my day to run 18 miles. The day started a little earlier then planned again thanks to my two male huskies. It always seems like it is one of the males that wakes me up, may be my female, Zoe, understands a girl needs her beauty sleep. Anyways, was planning on getting up at 5:30am so I could get the 18 miles in by 10am so I had a little down time before our family get together in the afternoon. Well Chico, the oldest male, moved around and did something to shake the bed and woke me up a little after 4:30am. I decided just to turn over and go back to sleep but Phoenix was right there with his nose in my face, staring at me. Oh, the joys of having dogs.

Well, decided to just go with getting up early and headed out on the run around 6:30am when it was about 28° outside. I really don’t like getting up early but I do enjoy having the streets mainly to myself when I run. Just when I hit the four mile mark I head into a local park where I run about 5 miles of my run. As the sun was starting to rise quite a bit I came along one of the ponds in the park where the ducks mainly stay the most. There was a mist over the water and the sun was coming up over the trees. I tried to get a few pictures with my iPhone but they didn’t really do it justice. Here is one so you at least get the idea.

The rest of the run was pretty uneventful (which is usually good).  When I finished it was about 50°. Quite a temperature change! Had my smoothie, 45 minute nap, walked my dogs then off to Cincinnati to celebrate Easter with my family. It was a long day! I was knocked out last night. Less than three weeks away until the Derby Festival Marathon! Overall pretty excited with an occasional thought of why am I running 26.2 miles again?

Overall my running has still been going well…however the past two long runs haven’t been my best. Last week I decided to skip my long run on Saturday because it was cold and quite windy. It wasn’t as cold as when I ran ten miles and came home with ice on my ponytail and my water bottles frozen but I believe it was a lot windier and Sunday was going to be warmer and sunny so decided to wait a day. I felt pretty good starting out Sunday morning but my left leg was a little tight so I decided to stop and get on the sidewalk to stretch at about 4 miles into the 12 mile run. (I run in the street except during a few parts of my run.) I stretched for a minute or two then decided to take off so I didn’t start getting tight from the cold. If I get on the sidewalk to stretch or something I usually just run on the sidewalk until a driveway and run back down to the street. I started doing my usual thing but I guess I missed that the sidewalk was fairly uneven and caught my left foot and went down. I ended up bruising both knees, scraping my right knee pretty well and jamming my shoulder a bit. If I was in one of my races I would have kept going and just ran through the pain but it had been a bad week (which I will discuss in my next post) and I was just mentally defeated. I decided to call it and day and just get a ride home from my mom. The rest of the day I felt kind of like I had been beaten up so I was wasn’t in the greatest mood. Luckily my shoulder felt fine the next day and just have been dealing with the bruised and scrapped up knees since. They don’t hurt while running but man if you hit them on something it is not a fun feeling.

Since I didn’t finish my 12 miles last weekend I felt more of a push to fit in 12 or 13 miles today. The run went well even though the GPS in my phone was messed up again.  I know my route well enough that I could estimate pretty well how far I needed to go but I still missed the GPS to help with my pace. I had worn my Ironman watch to help me get use to tracking time that way for my races so was able to go off of that to help figure out my pace. The run went well until about 10.5 miles when I started to feel “blister pain” on my right arch. I stopped to tighten my shoe and that did help some but it started to come back. I decided to call it a day so if it was a blister it didn’t get any worse so ended up only getting in just under 12 miles. I got home and sure enough a small blister had started forming. Hopefully it will go away soon and won’t be an issue. I switched to Asics from New Balance shoes about two months ago and now I am considering I might need to go back. It was Asics shoes that gave me my arch blisters about two years ago so might need to go back to New Balance.

Hoping the this coming week’s runs will be better and I will post again soon about some of the MS stuff I have been going through lately. Just too much to go in one post. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!