Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Foot Test

Yesterday my left foot bothered me during the cooldown portion of my speedwork session.  That had me concerned.  I didn't hurt while walking around today, but it did seem a little tender.  The plan was to test it out and if it started to become a problem, I would back off.  I'm 10 days out from my half marathon and it is time to cut back anyway.

I wanted to run in the morning, but I had to have some blood drawn.  The afternoon was busy with the District XI Cross Country Meet.  Chasing around 6 different races at Bethlehem Municipal Golf Course wore me out.  The good thing was that all of the running around allowed me to test out my foot a bit.  It seemed a little sore, but nothing too bad.  My quads are beat up again after the speedwork session and in fact they felt much worse than my foot.

It seemed like forever until the awards ceremony was over for the cross country meet.  Finally, I got to leave and get my run started.  I decided that I was fairly close to Bicentennial Park, so I'd go there and run on the Nor-Bath Trail.  It was a few minutes after 6 PM and I was already losing light.

I knew with it being dark, I'd have to watch the road crossings.  I could actually get about 3 miles in without crossing any roads.  I wanted to run 4 miles though.

I was just running easy today and started out very slow.  There was some soreness in my foot, but I felt pretty good.  I knew early on that I would likely complete the run.  I may have overcompensated a little, but I made sure to try to put some pressure on it to test it out too.

Partly because of my worries about the foot, the 1st mile was very slow.  I came across in 9:19.  I got through the road crossing fine.  Usually I would head east to Airport Road in this situation, but I opted to go the other direction this time.  I figured that when I did decide to cross a road, I would hit less traffic.

I was hoping to get to 1.5 miles before turning around.  That would give me only 1 mile to run in the other direction.  As I approached 1.5 miles, I saw a woman up ahead walking a dog.  I thought it was a woman anyway, but it was too dark to tell.  I am a guy, so I had to run a farther and check her out.  She was decent looking.  This caused me to go to 1.75 miles out and turn around.

I actually passed a guy in this stretch too (didn't check him out).  That was weird because there was almost no one out on the trail at dusk.  I only saw those two and a guy on a bike fly by later on.

I continued on and by now it was getting quite dark.  I really couldn't see much of anything.  If there was an object on the trail, like a walnut, I would've tripped on it.  Definitely not good for a sore foot.  I'm not sure, but that might've been my issue yesterday, although I don't specifically remember stepping on anything.

The road crossing was busy the second time around.  I had to wait a little and dart out in front of some headlights.  I wasn't close to the car, but I probably should've waited.

By now, I had picked up the pace and was really moving.  I almost didn't notice my foot at all.  I was just cruising along and enjoying the cool breeze.  I couldn't wait to just finish up.

I got back to Bicentennial Park and turned around for the short out and back.  That was uneventful and before I knew it, I was done with a solid 8:14 final mile.  A nice 4 mile recovery run where every mile got a little bit faster.

When I started at that park, there were a lot of cars in the lot watching kids play a soccer game.  By the end of the run, just over half an hour later, all but two of them were gone.  They left while I was stretching.

The run was solid and I'm happy that my foot didn't give me problems.  I'm hoping things will stay that way.  If not, I'll back off if I need to.  For now, I'm good. 

Tomorrow will be the regular group run with the LVRR.  It sure would be nice if I didn't have to run it along again.  I wasn't going to wear a headlamp, but after tonight's run, I might have to reconsider.  It is getting quite dark by 6:30 PM now.

4 miles - 35:03 (8:46 pace)

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