The Other Half Training Progress

My training for the half-marathon that I am running at the end of October has been slow but steady. I feel like the limiting factor is not my athletic ability but my body's ability to recover from the physical stress that jogging places on it. In particular, my shins have given me some trouble and I've had to take it really easy. For the last couple of weeks, I have only been able to run one day a week. Of course, it probably doesn't help that I do so many other things besides running. I'm still biking between 40 and 120 miles per week and I'm climbing mountains on the weekends. My body would probably recover a lot quicker for jogging if it were the only thing that I was doing.

I did achieve a new personal best with my training run this morning. I haven't verified the exact distance yet with my GPS, but judging from the map it looks like I jogged about 7.5 miles this morning. My previous best was about 6.3 miles. The funny thing is that I almost did it on accident. I was out running with Rosey this morning on our normal 6.3 loop. As I was approaching the final leg of our run (a good couple of hundred yards behind Rosey), I decided that I was feeling good and wanted to push myself a little harder this morning.

I figured that I would just jog up the road a little further and then come back before turning onto that final stretch. Of course, the further I got, the further I wanted to go. I knew that there was an intersection further up the road and thought that maybe I could turn down it and just make a slightly bigger loop. What I didn't realize was that the intersection was more than just a "little" further up the road. Before I knew it, I had run all the way out to the Krishna temple nearly into Payson. I was beginning to think that maybe I could just keep running. I dreamt of "accidentally" doing a full half-marathon as a training run.

Unfortunately, my dreams were bigger than my energy. I got up to the intersection of Hwy 164 and Spanish Fork Main before I just couldn't run anymore. Now the problem was that I was still 4 miles from home and it was already 7:30 in the morning. At the rate that I was walking, it would probably be about 9 in the morning before I finally made it back to the house. I was kind of starting to freak out, but then it occurred to me that Rosey hadn't left for work yet and that I might be able to coax her into coming to pick me up. My friendly neighborhood CarQuest auto parts store let me use their phone and shortly thereafter Rosey showed up to rescue me. Crisis averted. Next time, I think that I will plan my route a little more thoroughly.

The encouraging thing about my run this morning (besides the fact that I hit a new distance record) is that I don't feel nearly as much stress in my shins and knees as I have on previous runs. My calves, quads and butt are plenty sore, but those are just muscles. I can deal with muscle fatigue. The lack of soreness in my shins and knees may be an indication that my body is finally acclimating to the stress of jogging.