I started writing about the second toughest week of my training cycle, but then I thought, who wants to read a glorified training log? What people really want is gore. So gore it is. I drew out the story a bit to give it some drama and stuff. Feel free to skip to the end if you're more interested in the workouts I did the two and three weeks weeks before my marathon.
My first hard workout of the week was on Tuesday. I wanted to watch the Burnsville High School Cross Country Team race that afternoon, so I decided to get my workout done before work.
My run started before 6 AM, and that means it's dark. It was also raining, so I didn't even get that predawn light. I put on a headlamp to deal with the darkness, and a hat to deal with the rain.
The workout involved running two 3.5 mile intervals at 5:55 / mile with one mile of easy running in between. I usually plan my routes to avoid as many stoplights as possible, so I ran an out and back that only had two intersections with lights.
The run was going pretty well when I came to the intersection of Diffley and Johnny Cake Ridge Road. I was about to run a section of Diffley known by runners and cyclists for its lung bursting hills. I needed to go east on Diffley, then south on Pilot Knob (don't we have awesome street names in Eagan?), so I had to cross Diffley.
I could have waited for the light at Johnny Cake and Diffley, but I was in the zone. I decided to turn left on Diffley since the light was red. Then, I could have just waited for the light at Pilot Knob and Diffley, but I figured there was a good chance that would be red too.
There was no sense in breaking my rhythm, so when I came to a side street I looked back and forth for traffic before crossing. I turned right when I got to Pilot Knob, then turned around back toward Diffley. The light to cross Diffley was red, so I turned left again and figured I'd cross at side street again.
Halfway between Pilot Knob and Johnny Cake there was a side street. Traffic was clear, so I started to cross. I looked across the street and noticed the side street didn't go through. There's probably a median, I thought, so I shined my headlamp in front me toward the street, but unfortunately my right foot found the median before my headlamp.
I was running fairly fast at that point -- faster than 10 mph, so I stubbed my right toe really hard. I fell face first, mostly on my right forearm, and landed flat in the street. I was able to get back up pretty quickly and resume my run. My foot hut pretty bad and I could tell I'd scraped my forearm and cut my hands.
Thankfully my foot stopped hurting after a few minutes and I was able to continue my workout. When I got home, Laura was in the kitchen. "I think I hurt myself," I said. I showed her my right forearm -- it was pretty torn up. Blood was oozing out of a patch 2.5" long and 1.5" wide starting from my elbow and then in another 3" X 1" section from the middle of my forearm to my wrist.
I also had some road rash on my thighs and scrapes on my hands, but miraculously my chin didn't get cut. My post-run shower was excruciating as I scrubbed street dirt from my wounds. The next day we discovered sand in the bathtub, and after some detective work we realized it had probably stuck to me when I fell in the street and had been rinsed off in the shower,
My running suffered a little the next few days. I did a little jogging at the cross country meet the evening after my fall, and my foot was really bugging me, which made me change my gait, which made my left knee start hurting.
I probably should have taken Wednesday off -- my foot hurt was sore that morning, so I skipped the run. That afternoon, however, my foot was feeling a little better, so I went for a very slow run pushing Calvin in the jogging stroller. I had a streak of over 80 days in a row of running, and I didn't want to break it.
The knee was bothering me through Friday, but fortunately it started feeling better by Saturday. The foot still hurt a little, but it wasn't affecting my running too much.
This past Sunday was my last hard long run of this training cycle. I made it 16 miles with the last eight at marathon pace.
Here's how my peak weeks broke down:
Week 1 Workouts
- 9.7 miles with 10 minutes at 5:50 / mile, 6 X 400m at 5:25 / mile, 10 minutes at 5:50
- 10 miles with 8 miles at 6:30 / mile
- 20 mile long run with a 5k race
- 82 miles total for the week
Week 2 Workouts
- 9.4 miles with 2 X 3.5 miles at 5:55 / mile pace and a trip and fall
- 11.5 miles with 8 miles at 6:30 / mile pace and 2 miles at 5:52 / mile pace
- 16 mile long run with last 8 miles at 6:29 pace
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