T-Minus 47 Days and Counting. . .

Exponential suffering. I’ve written about it before. In my experience, it’s the running condition whereby I can feel great after 10 miles and, suddenly, I hit mile 11 and feel like absolute crap. That’s one of the great physical and mental challenges of running.

Experienced this on Saturday during our 18 miler, our longest run of the training season so far. Temps were very cool and overall conditions were just about perfect. The first 10 miles went by fairly quickly and without incident. We held to a 9:45 pace and I was feeling good. Hit the 13 mile mark in 2:07, right where we needed to be.

Then things became a little tougher as the cumulative effect of the previous miles began taking hold. Quads started getting a bit sore and the tendinitis in my left foot that I’ve been battling lately started flaring up. Last two miles were a struggle but we maintained our pace and brought it in, slightly in pain, in 2:56.

I shouldn’t really be surprised at the quad soreness or the foot pain, I suppose. The pounding of that much mileage is bound to have an effect. It’s just frustrating when everything else seems to be feeling fine and I still have to deal with the muscle aches and pains.

This week we step back a bit and we’re set for 8 x 800 and then a 5-mile tempo run. We’ve been a little crazy with some kids’ activities lately and have not been hitting the cross training as much, which might be having an effect on the muscle soreness. I need to get in the pool or on the bike to try to alleviate some of that.

Saturday, we’re running in the Madison Mini-Marathon (13.1), which will be a nice change of pace. Our plan is to treat it as a training run so I don’t expect that we’ll be pushing it too hard or going for any PRs. We’ll just take the race as it comes and see what happens.