Week 14 (October 13 - October 19): The Wall #2 and invoking the Power of Rest

Tuesday -
I must admit that I didn't see it coming but this week may have been one of the hardest of the training season both mentally and physically.  What the heck?

Lol the mental wall (#2 for me) had an easy cause of explanation.  After conquering my longest run to date last Saturday, this was my brain's interpretation/definition of Coach John's announcement that we would now be TAPERING our runs til the race.

To taper (verb) - To not run ever again until the morning of the 2Cities marathon on November 3rd.

You can understand my shock then when I found myself at SRC once more on the regularly scheduled Tuesday night and had to...run.

Getting through practice was like running through molasses but luckily one of my marathon running buddies, Rosa let me distract myself by chatting her ear off for six miles that we jogged.  She had just raced the Long Beach half-marathon and I was recovering from the 22-miler so we took it easy and yay 6 miles done!

Thursday -  Fun Run night at SRC

Grace! My friend who introduced me to SRC:)

 Two days later and my brain was still getting used to the idea that I was still expected to be mobile and completing training runs.  Survived Thursday's jog by meeting up with the Fun Run group and actually running the same route we ran for marathon training on Tuesday - yay no thinking required to navigate the route.

Always very spirit lifting to see my friend Grace and some familiar faces of my fellow marathon runners at the Thursday runs :)

 
Saturday -
I had come to terms that I would still be completing regular mileage up until 2 Cities and I was excited to be taking very leisurely 12 -13 mile scenic job up to Pill Hill and back to SRC.

And then the physical wall hit - my achilles heel...literally haha.  I had been ignoring my ankle for the past 1-2 weeks since this "injury" as I am loathe to label it creeped up on me.  In retrospect, it was pretty similar to my knee pain in July which I chalked up due to "increased in intensity or duration of workout".  My ankle would have a sharp pain at start of the run but disappear while jogging and then reappear whenever I stopped or started.

Google internet search that matched my sports injury symptoms best --> achilles tendinitis.
The outcome?  Stopped dead in my tracks at mile 11 when my right foot/heel landed "wrong" upon restarting the 10 minute job/1 min rest pace I was using.  Arg!!!  I walked pretty much the rest of the way back to SRC and my car.

Coach John! (by the Coke house before I took a walking "break"...note the boundless optimism soon to be shattered - j/k!!! :D )

Will be taking Coach John's advice to rest - ice - rest - ice and more rest....it will be hard but I accomplished so much to date that I think I would rather take a week off to rest than miss my race! :p *knock on wood*
Darn foot!!  Plus the more I read the scarier my injury could get: normal -> tendinitis -> micro tears -> rupture!  I WILL invoke the power of REST and continue to imbibe my favorite of course...the healing powers of WAAA-TAAAHHHH lol.

The positive - whoo hoo more time to catch up on "How I Met Your Mother"...I'm halfway through Season 3 on Netflix :D!!!

Will see how my achilles feels this Tuesday....here's hoping it's a little better.

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Run stats:
WEEK 14		Mileage	Duration (hr:min:sec)	Pace (min/mile)
Sun	13-Oct	rest	n/a	n/a
Mon	14-Oct	rest	n/a	n/a
Tues	15-Oct	6.24	1:19:45	12:47
Wed	16-Oct	rest	n/a	n/a
Thurs	17-Oct	5.15	00:49:12	09:32
Fri	18-Oct	rest	n/a	n/a
Sat	19-Oct	13	2:37:23	12:06
Total weekly mileage		24.39 miles