Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Recoup, Refocus, Renew

I finally got my finisher medal for the 3 For The Road Series, yeah!! I really enjoyed the 3FTR series; a 5k, 4 miler and 5 miler. I ended up overall in 4th place for my age group!! I was pleased with that, but even more pleased that I was able to run each of the distances at a 9 minute per mile pace.

After the 3FTR Series, I ran the Merrill Lynch Bull Run. This turned out to be a family affair. I ran the 10k, my son ran the 5k, and my daughter volunteered to work the water station. It's amazing how the lure of service hours she needs for school was able to get her out of bed at 5:30am on a Saturday morning!

The Bull Run started out and ended on A1A in front of Spanish River Park in Boca Raton. Lauren was at the water stop just after mile #1. This was the 1st time she has been to one of my races so I was very happy! The middle part of the course went through some really nice residential neighborhoods with lots of beautiful houses.




I finished in 55:50 which is a 8:58 pace! Woo hoo, sub 9 minutes!! I still need to work on keeping my pace more consistent. I start out fast (well, relatively speaking!) and slow down each mile (M1 8:00 M2 8:40 M3 9:02 M4 9:14 M5 9:22 M6 9:39)

After the Bull Run, I decided to take a couple of weeks off from running and karate. Mostly to recoup; to see if some time off would help to heal my heel (it didn't). I've been running with heel pain for over a year. The foot doctor "diagnosed" it as a heel spur and prescribed ibuprofen and heel inserts. The heel inserts didn't help; the IBU did. But as soon as I stopped taking the IBU, the pain returned. I was too busy training for my 2nd degree black belt and for the New York marathon to stop running or to go back to the doctor and I didn't want to have to take IBU chronically (I am a pharmacist so I know the dangers) so I kept on running.

But recently the heel had gotten worse. Waking up in the morning, I couldn't walk and had to tip toe around. I've been talking with so many friends, fellow martial artists, fellow runners and everyone has a different opinion and a different remedy. So, the thought was to take a couple of weeks off to see if that would help. And since it didn't, I think it's time to go back to the doctor. But now the question is, do I go back to the podiatrist or do I go to an orthopaedic doctor?

Meanwhile, with the heel pain and my next marathons more than 1/2 a year away, I was losing focus and not feeling really motivated. But then came April 20th and the Boston Marathon. I was able to watch on-line and that is exactly what I needed to see to get refocused. I was so routing for Kara Goucher and actually had tears when she dropped back to 3rd place in the final miles.

A week after the Boston marathon was the London marathon. I got up at 4am on that Sunday morning to watch the race on-line. It was an awesome and inspiring race. The website said that registration for the 2010 race would open the following day. So, I went on-line on Monday and registered for the lottery. I'll find out in later September/early October whether or not I get selected or not. I'm hoping that I will have the same luck that I had with New York and get picked on my 1st try. But if not, that's ok too.

And now, I am recharged, refocused and renewed.





Run long, run strong

Dani

2 comments:

  1. I will be hoping you make it to the London field, Dani! You will be great wherever you run...

    ReplyDelete