May 4th, 2009 – Zone 3

Well, this is the week before the next race.  I’m not feeling it.  I don’t know why, but it seems either my body is revolting due to the vacation, or because I’m carrying extra weight, or the threshold training has my muscles really sore, or even worse that because I mostly abandoned the strength training I’m no longer really burning fat correctly.  One of those, or some combination just has my legs feeling heavy.  So, it was with some angst that I got to the gym for this run.  I don’t think the next race will be a move in the right direction.  I’ve managed to shave pace off of each subsequent race, but I am now just setting my expectations to not lose pace for this one.

I still am not sure whether or not they’ll hold the race at all.  As of today (I’m posting this blog entry on Wednesday the 6th) there are only 26 confirmed entries and the race is on the 10th.  Since I’m a newcomer to the road racing circuit, I don’t really know what a break even point would be for a road race or whether that even comes into play.  I just know the race registration was set up to handle 1000 entrants and we’re not even at 10% full.  One thing I will say, though is that as it stands this minute, there are only three men in my age group and 11 total.  So, I could use statistics to show I was really doing well when in fact I’m probably doing terribly.  Saying I finished 10th among men sounds really awesome if you don’t know I was 10 out of 11, or I finished third in my age when there are only three in my age group which means I really finished last.  LOL

Housekeeping:  8.3 miles in 70 minutes, 8:26 per mile average; 922 calories burned.  I was disappointed to see that yet another battery was dead or dying in the foot pod and it only captured 7.5 miles of the total run.  I was also disappointed that this was my second zone 3 run since coming back from vacation where I didn’t get to 9 miles.  The regression is annoying because I’d really liked to have been pushing toward 10 miles.  Now I’m pushing back toward 9!  Oh well.  I am sure it will work itself out and I’ve got 5 months to get it all back into alignment.

Broke down over the weekend and bought a new pair of running shoes.  This time, I made sure to choose stability control.  The difference is stark.  I had no foot pain, no worries over foot pain.  I got a couple of raw spots on the top of my foot, but I don’t know if they are related to the new shoes or the old shoes.  I just looked down after the run and saw two really raw spots where the tongue was rubbing against my foot where it bends at the ankle.  Oh well, I don’t think these are serious and I’ll just watch how things develop as I work out the new shoes.  Boy are they comfortable!  That’s a lesson I’ll not soon forget.  I’m not an over or under pronating runner, but I need the stability control due to my flat feet.  I’ll use the other shoes when I do elliptical or biking, which I plan to incorporate into the marathon training.

Since I’m tapering, the rest of the runs this week will be shorter distances and slower overall. The next run is half zone 2, half zone 3 and the last run is all zone 2.  That will also mean I’m going to have to cut my calories on those days but I am not sure by how much.

Cheers!