Hi again. I’ll warn you up front that this diary entry is on the long side, but I hope you’ll stick with it. You’ll probably laugh a little and maybe even learn something. I know over the past two weeks I’ve done both.
My life has been busy but not with lawn mowing. It’s been so dry I haven’t needed to do that for over a month. In a couple of places spiders have spun webs across the brown blades. Summer heat has definitely arrived. Shoot me for saying this, but I miss having to wear those running gloves I complained about in my first entry. Running has been relegated to the wee hours of the morning. I tried to run after work on 7/27, but the heat instantly zapped me.
I saw the physical therapist, and after bending me like a pretzel, he thinks that my pain is not a hernia or a strained iliopsoas. He thinks the ball of my right femur is sliding forward in the hip socket and pinching ligaments. This is because my hamstrings and deep hip muscles are too tight and not allowing my leg to fully rotate in the socket with each stride. Speed work exasperates this (which I definitely agree with). He prescribed some exercises to help stretch out those muscles and told me to concentrate more on form and less on speed. I see him again next week. Last week was supposed to be my first 40-mile week, but this injury has caused me to back off -- bummer.
My wife was sure that one of our cats had peed somewhere in our bedroom. Her sniffing nose led her right to a pile of my running clothes. My children began avoiding me when I returned from running, and frankly I wanted to avoid myself. To make matters worse, I couldn’t wash the ammonia smell out of my clothes. The natives were restless and something needed to be done.
Tammy suggested Win laundry detergent, which worked great at freshening up my clothes. Mark, my triathlete co-worker, suggested ingesting soy protein prior to a long run. I found differing opinions on the Internet, and I’m certainly no expert. Some say to take in more carbohydrates - the best source of fuel - and adding protein makes the problem worse. Others say that during a really long run all of the stored carbohydrates are used up so the body is forced to convert protein to energy. By ingesting soy-based protein, the body converts that to energy instead of muscle tissue. Soy-based protein has less of the components that contribute to the ammonia smell than muscle or whey protein. Prior to the ammonia problem I regularly added a tablespoon of soy protein to my bowl of Kashi Crunch breakfast cereal. I did that to strengthen muscle ignorant of any odor-reducing benefits. Recently, however, I had switched to eating just a peanut butter-covered bagel. Mark’s suggestion seemed to align with the empirical evidence; however, the problem was confounded by the fact that my recent long runs were now much longer and the days hotter. Desperate, and facing a family mutiny, I went back to the protein-enhanced Kashi prior to my 20-miler and returned smelling much better. The problem may be solved. I think they’ll let me live, and you can breathe easier (pun intended) on October 7.
I’m really jazzed that I was able to complete my 20-miler in 3 hours 51 minutes, running the entire time. My course took me through 3 Indiana counties, which was really fun. I’m in Louisville, KY this week on a business trip and the drive from Fort Wayne really put my accomplishment in perspective. I had the stamina, with an injury, to run continuously longer than it took me to drive 240+ miles to another state. Wow, I am truly insane!
So far I’ve had an encounter with a skunk and a mishap with my pepper spray. More strange and funny things happened to me during Saturday’s 20-miler.
Four miles into my run, a car pulls out of a driveway, starts to drive away and then stops a few yards in front of me. It's dark with only the glow of a pre-dawn moon to light my path. I'm not sure who this kook is so I pull out my pepper spray just in case. As I run by he leans out the window, holds out a pizza box and says, "Want a slice?" Obviously, this guy is not a runner because cold, greasy pizza from a stranger at 6:15 AM is the last thing I want in the middle of a run.
Then, a couple of miles later I'm running past a dairy farm. That's usually a boring thing, but NO!, not for me. I just happen to run by when a couple of cows are getting frisky. I could swear the bull looked at me with disgust for invading their privacy.
Then, if that's not enough, I'm running down a lonely country road and see a stopped train blocking the crossing. What do I do? Do I turn my loop course into an out-and-back, wait for the train to clear or climb between the cars? When I get to the crossing there are 2 tracks, and I can't see what's coming down the other track. I hear a train whistle in the distance, but I don't see or feel anything. I decide to go for it. I climb up the ladder on one car, scale a small catwalk, look both ways --- no train coming down the other track --- and then climb down the ladder on the other side. Phew ... I made it. I'm no more that 10 feet from the crossing and I hear "Crrrrreeeeeeeeek". My heart races -- I know what that sound is -- rusty wheels. I look behind me, and sure enough, I see the train starting to roll. I shutter at the thought of how close I came to being stuck between those cars, traveling 50 mph down the track for who knows how long and to who knows where.
At this point in your training you may be overwhelmed and thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?” You may doubt yourself and think you are not a marathoner. If I start to think that, I remember what happened on my first long run back in December (only a 4-miler at the time – I have to laugh). I passed this lady walking her little yapping dog. She said, “Sorry, my dog doesn’t like runners.” She didn’t know that I had been running officially for only a week and had never run a race. At that moment I realized that I am a runner because I am running.
You are a marathoner because you are training for the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon even if you have never completed a marathon before. Train with pride, because you are a member of a small select group of individuals who endeavor to go the distance.
One step at a time,
Dave
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