May 5th, 2009 – 10K5

Second taper race of the week.  This one is a creation of my own design.  There’s really no rhyme or reason to it.  I wanted a one hour total run and wanted in the work section to have half of the run in zone 2 and half in zone 3.  It makes for a much slower run overall, but then again, I’m only using it to taper now anyway, so I don’t want a fast or intense run.  Of course, with me still carrying around at least some extra weight, maybe I should be looking to run harder, but I also don’t want my dead legs to be even worse.

The run was nice in that my arches are healing quite nicely and there’s no indication that they’ll be torn up by these shoes.  The problem now seems to be the tops of my feet.  I finished the run and discovered that one spot had been rubbed so raw it bled into the sock!  HURL!  I’m not supposed to be this violent on myself.  I honestly can’t tell if these are new sores or were inherited from the old shoes.  I just know I’ve now got new spots on the top of my foot right where the tongue of the shoe would end that are ripped open and quite nasty looking.  The price I am paying for my mania!

Housekeeping:  7 miles in 60 minutes, an 8:34 per mile average.  727 calories burned.  7 miles in an hour isn’t bad at all, considering all but 25 minutes of that hour was in zone 2 or lower.  I’m still mildly concerned that my stamina isn’t what it was and I don’t know if it is dead legs (which is a made up condition I use to describe how they feel) or the extra pounds (it fluctuates, but I know I’m up 4 lbs since vacation and I don’t know where it went, LOL) or just the lack of activity.  I just like using the taper runs as a guide to how the race will go and these haven’t given me a lot of hope.

On the subject of the race……..the number of participants has now reached a point I’m no longer concerned they’ll cancel the race.  It is still much smaller than I’d expected (the half marathon I’m considering in November already has more confirmed entrants than the race in 4 days) but there are now 6 total in my age bracket.  That means I’ll have to really run the race if I want to win an award. LOL  Actually, I still just want to finish at the same pace I did for the last or slightly faster.  I would really still like my last 10K before the half marathon to be below 42 minutes total, which means I’ll need to shave off 10 or 11 seconds per mile to make that happen.  I don’t know if I truly can or not.

Cheers!