Saturday, December 17, 2011

Week 4, Day 6 - Rounding Out the Curves

4 miles today.  It's a 'milestone' (yuk yuk yuk) in three ways: 1) It's a new 'farthest distance' for my running, 2) It's the first time I've combined 2 different runs (most of my 1.5 mile run plus my 3 mile Popeye's run), and 3) I've now officially finished the 1st of my 7 months of training (Even though in reality I've been running around 6 weeks).

The run started out well enough in the freezing 37 degree temperature outside.  I dressed in only some running capris and a long T-shirt.  Aside from the very beginning of the run, I felt perfectly temperate nearly the whole time.  However, in the beginning, my ankles were feeling really tight which is annoying.  Today I suddenly remembered the 6 year old ankle injury I sustained while snowboarding in Breckenridge, CO.  It's funny because in all the reading up on marathon trainings I've been doing, I had completely forgotten about it until today!  It wasn't a terrible injury - just a bad sprain, but I did get to rock a set of crutches for a few weeks and one of those fashionable air cast boot things for nearly 2 months until it healed.  Let me tell you... it was pretty cool.  In remembering my old injury, I realized I'll have to be even a little more cognisant of my body while I'm training to ensure I don't reinjure myself.  I'm also going to have to do some research on ankle exercises, both stretching and strengthening.

I've been having a little problem which maybe some of my more experienced runner friends can help me with?  It seems like no matter how many times I use the restroom before I leave for a run, I STILL have to go pee about 1/2 mile into my runs.  Since I'm still running lower mileage I can make it home before it gets really bad, but I know this won't do once I start running 6-7 miles.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  I don't want to have to plan bathrooms into my long runs or rack up my time for the marathon because I have to hit the porto-potties!  Ugh!

The other running-related issue I'm having is my earphones :(  I really love my earphones because they are pink (yes, it's vain and I know it), but for some reason they're constantly falling out of my ears.  It seems as though I spend 1/2 my runs sticking them back in and it's getting annoying.  I have some extra styrofoam cover thingies from a previous pair of earphones, so I'll see if that helps the situation. 

In the end, I ran the whole 4 miles very slowly, but I felt really good the entire time.  There really was not a single moment I considered stopping or turning home early. By the end of the run, I really felt as though I could have kept going for at least another mile or two.  I'm actually a little bummed that this coming week is a step down in the long run mileage and I'm going to have to wait 2 weeks to run 4.5 miles.

No comments:

Post a Comment