Down but not out!

I went to the doctor today to find out that I have some tendonitis in my ankle/achilles area. It really isn't that bad but the doctor suggested that I take it easy for two weeks. That means no high-impact activities, sadly that includes basketball and of course running! After the two weeks, I can ease back into my normal workout regimen. He did say I can participate in lower impact activities like walking, biking, and swimming. I am sooo going to be doing those things these next two weeks! One thing that COMPLETELY bums me out is that due to these new restrictions, I won't be able to participate in the Soldier Field 10 Mile race at the end of this month. I was so excited to go out and finish my first long distance run! This will be the second time I will have to bow out of a race because of health issues (Hot Chocolate 15K '09 - H1N1). I keep telling myself that this year is about the marathon. I am not training all hard to get up to a 10 mile race. I want the entire 26.2! And if I want it, then I have to know when to take a step back and let my body heal itself. Apparently, this is one of those times. I know it will be worth it in the end. And besides, I don't have to wait much longer for another shot at a long distance race. I am registered for the North Shore 1/2 Marathon in mid-June. First thing is first. Get healthy enough and back in running shape after these two weeks, then get ready for that run.

Thank you for all the support on Twitter and DailyMile about my injury. There really is strength in numbers :)

In better news, chicagonow.com's "Marathon Miss Fit" has allowed me to adverstise my fundraising efforts on her blog! Thank you so much Connie for getting my story out about my dad! Here is the link: Running Feet, Helping Hands

Recovering quicker than expected...

I started writing a blog post this morning about how incredibly sore I was from yesterday's 10 mile run. Both of my calves were pretty much cramping up all day and night yesterday, even after a 30 minute post-run stretch session and a very long cold shower. I was going to write about how I realized how much harder this has all just become. How I am finally realizing what I am getting into. How I now see why this marathon idea is just crazy. Then, something wild happened. I went on along with my usual Sunday. Jaz and I went to church, bought groceries, took a nap, hung out with my Mike, Tracy, Haley (my goddaughter), and Aiden, visited my nieces at my mom's house, then ate dinner at Entourage with Jaz. I thought for sure I would be hurting throughout the day, and maybe even into tomorrow. But oddly enough, I was pretty ok. There were still lingering effects from yesterday's run, but for the most part, I was pretty well recovered. One good night sleep (which may not happen tonight as I am looking at 12:02AM on my system clock) and I should be good to workout the next day.

Now that I have my legs under me again today I think my physical damage has been repaired, but now onto the psychological damage to fix. Ten miles was the longest I have ever run, and obviously will not be the longest I'd ever run. In the next couple months I'll be going much further, and once the CARA team training starts in June, I'll end up getting up to 20 miles. So, at some point I'll be running twice the distance I ran yesterday. Oh dear! I am starting to realize the magnitude of this race, and I am starting to get scared. As I mentioned in my Daily Mile post about my 10 mile run, I have friended many good running resources on Twitter and Daily Mile who I am so grateful for. These people are my motivation because I know at some point in their running career, they were at this same point in their training and may have had similar doubts and worries. And now they are running 10-15 miles with no issue. Why can't that be me? I know that it can't happen now, but it can happen over time if I stick to it. I will continue to use them as my inspiration...here are a couple of the people who inspire my running:

Chanthana - Twitter/DailyMile

Sergio - Twitter/DailyMile

Mark - Twitter

Freddy - Twitter/DailyMile

Jordan - Twitter/DailyMile

Brian - DailyMile

Time to rest up...and get ready for another week of training! Oh yeah...and one more source of motivation:

Walk before you run; Run before you run faster

I mentioned this a little bit on one of my recent DailyMile entries. It just amazes me how fast some people can run. As a teenager I could run a 10 minute mile. I absolutely HATED running back then, and just played basketball. There is a level of endurance involved in basketball, but it is definitely different than distance running. I look back now at my teenage self and I wish I could talk through time and tell past me to start running more, because when he turns 30, he will want to be faster when running races. He would probably tell me there would be no way that he would end up loving running. Somehow I would have to convince him that basketball would become secondary to running in his life. Right out of the script from LOST or Back to the Future, huh?

Anyways getting back to the topic at hand. Speed. How is it that the human body can travel at such speeds? For instance, the guy who won the Shamrock Shuffle 8K I ran in just a couple of weekends ago finished around 25 minutes! That means when I got to the start line (28 minutes after the elite group took off), he had already finished the race and finished a couple cups of water, a banana, and got his free beer. Meanwhile, I finish a couple of minutes under an hour, and I celebrated that! :)

Then I see people on DailyMile posting runs where they would average anywhere from 7-8 min/mile. Even in my best shape in high school, I never touched those kinds of speeds. Let me get across that I am not hating on these people. I am simply in awe of what they can do with what they have. And what they have is the same general anatomy as me: Two legs, two arms, brain, heart, lungs, etc. Now of course there are variations in their equipment compared to mine, and they have had years and years of training and discipline.

So I can't help but wonder what kinds of steps I need to take in order to close the gap on some of these runners. Now I am pretty I won't be getting to the 7-8 min/mi speed, but I would just love to chase my old self. 10 minute mile. Obviously with this marathon training hindering any true progress in speed, I may not get to it this year. But I think it is something I would like to pursue. Last year I was able to shave around 5 minutes off of my 5K time bringing me down to 32:32 - 10:29/mile. Just need to shave off another 30 seconds to reach that goal (assuming I still could run as fast). Maybe I'll catch you next year, "16 year old Joey". I've got my eyes on a bigger prize this year! 26.2!

Hundred Push-up Challenge

Last week, I asked one of my friends from DailyMile about the hundred push-up challenge he kept posting about. He linked me to the hundredpushups.com site, which is basically a six-week program that is supposed to get you strong enough to do 100 push-ups without stopping. I sent the link to a couple of my co-workers that have been or trying to start up working out. Coop and Sam accepted the challenge and last week we decided to
start off the program with the initial test. Cooper did 27, Sam did 31, and I did 35, but I don’t think I went low enough on all of mine. According to the training if you were able to do more than 25 in your initial test, you should start on week 3 in the most advanced level. So this week we did.

Monday Coop and I went to the gym at lunch to start off Week 3 Day 1 as instructed by the program. The first day for our level had us doing 5 sets: 14, 18, 14, 14, and then max (but at least 20). I got the sweet app for my iPod Touch that tracks your progress on this program. Geez, there’s an app for everything! I was able get through the first four sets pretty well. I really had to push out the last couple. When I got to the max set, I only got to 11. Then I did the last nine over a couple more mini-sets. Hah!

Today I went after work to do my push-ups. Day 2 consists of 5 sets once again: 20, 25, 15, 15, and then max (at least 25). Again, I got through the first four sets alright. The second set of 15 was a little tough, I really had to push out the last 4 or 5. Then when I got to the max set, once again I collapsed at 12. I finished off the minimum 25 over a couple of mini-sets once again.

I am feeling okay after these first two sets. Not overly sore or anything like that. I think months (if not the past 2 years) of pushups really helped me out. I want to be able to max out to the minimum in the 5th set of the workout. I will most likely repeat this week’s workout next week as well, of course around my running schedule. Wish me luck!