Eureka Moments

Sometimes the obvious stares you right in the face. For the past month and a half I've been running through lingering ankle soreness that would probably be technically described as achilles tendonitis. I've never had this type of problem before, and couldn't figure out why my right ankle would give me such a hard time. I had a Eureka moment on Wednesday evening as I was doing a pace workout - 10 miles. In the later miles of the run, I went through the local college campus to do one mile around the track. After spinning around the track a few times, I began to feel my ankle soreness more prominently (usually it loosens up when I run). Duh. The track was the answer. When the Garmin fouled up, I started doing some work on the track to have a good idea of distance. All the spinning around in circles must have done it. Now if I can just heal up in the next few weeks. The aforementioned pace run did not go well. Pace was all over the place. First couple of miles were slow, next couple better, one mile too quick (under 8 minutes). Hopefully I can improve upon that in the weeks ahead.

I can't believe the marathon is just a little over a month away. I've got a 20-miler this weekend and another 20-miler in a couple of weeks - amazing. Next weekend I'm planning to race a 15K to see what I can do and perhaps what I can expect from a marathon performance. I finally signed up for the marathon. I waited as long as possible for the price went up.

I haven't written much about my battle against crap (food). The battle was going well for a couple of weeks. I'd made some progress on weight loss, was incorporating fruits in my diet and not snacking at night. That pattern pretty much went out the window a couple of weeks ago during my travels north for the Salem Lake. My reversal of progress culminated with independently finishing off a box of Swiss Cake Rolls in less than a week's time (one each day for dessert). Perhaps hitting rock bottom has me realizing I need to regain focus and work hard for the next month to eat responsibly and fuel properly for my goal race.