Goofy Training – Week 3 of 22

I roll my ankles all the time. Seriously, it is a near daily occurrence for me. What I don’t often do is roll my ankle, loose my balance and belly flop onto the pavement like I did 18km into my 24km run on Saturday morning in Stratford. It was truly comical. I was doing a shoulder check preparing to cross the street and deposit an empty gel wrapper in a trash bin when my left foot hit an uneven ridge between the concrete curb and asphalt road. From there I hit the ground: left knee, left hand, right hand and belly flop.

Fortunately there were no cars on the road and I was able to at least get up and sit on the curb immediately. Another runner had seen me go down and came over the check that I was OK. My hands and knee were scraped and a bit bloody but it was mostly my pride that was hurt. My ankle felt alright so I decided to try and walk it off for about 400m. I was actually less than 2km from the hotel and I considered bagging the run right there. Once I started moving though my ankle felt about 90% so I completed the run and then launched into ankle recovery mode.

Ironically when I ran in Stratford last year I also had ankle problems and needed my Dad to get me a bag of ice from the hotel restaurant during brunch. By the time I made it down to brunch I must have been looking a little worse for wear because one of the hotel managers brought me an “amuse-bouche” of two crackers topped with peanut butter and jam while I was waiting for my order of blueberry pancakes to arrive!

Obviously I didn’t run on Sunday and I’ll be taking a few days off this week too. My ankle is still swollen and bruised but I don’t have any pain while walking so I don’t think it’s a major injury.

Goofy Training – Week 2 of 22

I got a little distracted from marathon training this week. I got all my running workouts in but towards the end of the week I found myself spending a lot of time thinking about triathlon. Early in the week I discovered that there’s an outdoor 50m pool less than 2km from my apartment. So on Thursday morning I went to check it out and I’m so glad that I did. I do 2000m of freestyle at 7am and felt amazing. In fact I enjoyed this swim so much that I’ve decided that next summer I’m going to try and do a triathlon. After a bit of research I’m seriously thinking of doing the Guelph Lake Sprint Triathlon in June 2011. Sure I’m looking way far in the future but it’s going to give me something to get excited about after the Goofy!

Now back to marathon/Goofy training. I had a full day of socializing planned for Saturday so I decided to do my long run on Friday afternoon. I headed out at about 6:30pm and did a big loop of the northwest side of the city seeking out as many gravel trails as I could find. In particular I ran on the trails on the outskirts of the Columbia Forest neighbourhood for the first time. They were surprisingly hilly including several sections with small switchbacks. I plan to go back at some point and explore the trails within the forest. It was just too dark to head into the woods on Friday night. I’m hoping that will help prepare me for the 25K Run for the Toad trail race.

I’m glad that I’ve hit the 20km long run distance. Next week I venture beyond the half marathon distance for the first time in a very long time!

Goofy Training – Week 1 of 22

I promise this is a post about running not tennis but I since spent last weekend in Toronto with my parents attending the Rogers Cup and I couldn’t resist posting one tennis picture. This is Roger Federer playing Novak Djokovic in the Saturday evening semi-final match. Federer went on to lose to Andy Murray in Sunday’s final.

Now back to running. The first week of Marathon/Goofy training is in the bank. I originally had two mid-week easy runs scheduled but I combined them into one longer run after work on Tuesday with my friend Alice. We’re doing the Horror Hill 15K run at the end of October so we got together to train on the course. It was ridiculously hot and humid but we took it easy, drank loads of water and gatorade and got it done. Actually hot and humid is a good way to describe all my runs this week. I’m finding it very difficult to gauge my pace these days. I’m running slower than I’d like to be but I don’t know how much of that to attribute to the heat and how much to attribute to my fitness level. I’ve been ignoring my Garmin a lot lately and just running by feel. Hopefully by the time the temperatures start to drop I’ll have regained some fitness and I’ll be able to compare my paces to previous training cycles.

Overall I’d give myself a grade of B for this week. I hit my goal mileage of 40km for the week but I didn’t get any cross training in. I just learnt that the city of Waterloo has an outdoor 50m pool that’s open during the summer. How did I not know about this? My goal is to get there in the next week to check it out and get some cross training in.

Marathon and Goofy Training Starts Today

Today is the first day of my Fall 2010 Marathon / 2011 Goofy training program. Of course it was a rest day so instead of running I’m blogging. My target fall marathon is the Road2Hope Hamilton Marathon which is 13 weeks away and Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge is 9 weeks after that. My “home brew” training program is below.

I chose the Hamilton because (1) it was the latest fall marathon I could find in Ontario and (2) it ranked #4 for proportion of Boston qualifiers in 2009. I’m not looking to BQ this year but I might be ready for that in a couple of years so it would be good to test drive course. I have a couple of exciting tune-up races also scheduled for the fall. I’ll be doing my first trail race at the Run for the Toad 25K and I’ll be running the Horror Hill 15K with a friend. Thirteen weeks isn’t very long to get ready for a marathon but I’m going to make it work. My goad for this race is to finally beat four hours. 3:59:59 here I come.

The Goofy is a whole other story. For those uninitiated into the world of running it’s a half marathon on Saturday morning followed by a full marathon on Sunday morning. I’ll be going down to Florida to visit my best friend from high school and then going to Disneyworld with three friends. I don’t expect to be making any PB attempts at Disney but you never know.

Of course this training program is just a guide. I’m already mixing this up this week and doing a long training run tomorrow evening!