January 2011 - It's A Wrap!

Wooooosh - there goes January. Despite a fantastic month of running in which I saw my highest weekly and monthly mileage ever (33.5 miles the week of Jan 23; 121.6 miles for the month!), I let these last few days get me in a funk. Partly from the taper blues, partly from an unexpected slow recovery from our Galloway group run on Saturday and partly from a really painful tooth that knocked me down (physically and mentally) for the rest of the weekend, into Monday night. In fact, I started to write this blog earlier but I just couldn't get it going. It occurred to me I hadn't run since Saturday and I wasn't feeling "worthy" of writing about running because I wasn't doing any!!  I have 2 short runs on my schedule today so I decided to get my feel-good hormones circulating and jumped on the treadmill before signing into work for a quick 2-miles. It's amazing what a difference just 20 minutes can make. The gloomy Eeyore in me made a quick exit and I know I'll be feeling more invigorated and energized after running with our Galloway group members tonight.

I was surprised at the toll our group run took on my body. It was such a beautiful long slow distance run through streets and trails in Simi Valley, CA. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day for our first 9.5-miler together. There were a few pretty steep hills but at the pace we were running, I did not think twice about altering my personal training schedule last week to account for the extra hill work. In true Vera-style, I still kept double-workout Tuesday on the schedule, but because I was starting my taper period, I decided to do a Box-Fit routine on Kinect (Biggest Loser Challenge) in the evening after completing a slightly faster than planned 4-miler earlier that morning. I probably should have stuck with Yoga as planned because I was sore for 2 days afterwards. I was completely exhausted by the time we went to bed.

To continue this state of brilliance I was in, rather than run after work on Wed, I decided to run first thing in the morning. It was the first time I ran spontaneously. I mean, I intended to run that day, but got the itch to do it suddenly and since it was a short 30-minute, I had the time before work to get it done. My rationalization included thoughts of the 4-miler on the schedule for Thursday and the possible benefit of more rest in between workouts. If I ran first thing Wed morning, I'd be training on exhausted legs (possibly helpful for the final couple of miles in the race or a huge mistake). If I waited until after work on Thursday to run again, I'd be giving myself 36 hours of rest.  By Friday, I was tired and freaking HUNGRY!!! I seriously could not shovel enough food in my face. Now of course, here come the body image issues. I scaled back on my mileage and now I'm eating more. Then I decided to torture myself further by getting on the scale. Up 2.5 pounds. Crap.  Hopefully it's primarily extra intramuscular glycogen and water - my quads were definitely swollen last week so I know they were in repair mode.

I ended up running with multiple groups on Saturday so 9.5 miles turned into 14. My stubborn left IT band had had enough of me and wasn't shy in letting me know. In light of this, I took Sunday and Monday off completely. The painful toothache kept me up on Saturday night and was almost unbearable by Sunday night. My jaw and the gums around this painful tooth were swollen. I could barely focus on anything but that pain - but it did keep me from wanting to run get off the couch so maybe it was a blessing in a terrible disguise? This whole situation was not helping my mental state either. What if it's something that will keep me from racing on Sunday. Yikes!! Luckily, I was able to get in to see my dentist on Monday. As it turns out, the teeth surrounding the dental implant I have are moving which is causing some shifting of the crown over the implant. A piece of food got stuck IN my gums and caused an infection. A little irrigation and some antibiotics - it's all good. No pain today. Thank goodness!!!

So here we are 4.5 days away from Surf City - just 3 short runs left before the big day. I'm glad I decided to run this morning. It cleared my head and brought me back to a good spot. Right where I want to be going into this race. Let's do this!