A smart friend of mine, Jean Groce, dropped me a note wishing me a speedy recovery on my ankleness, my ankle-agility, my… there’s probably a clever word play on a tweaking ankle but I got nothing. Anyway, Jean wisely reminded me:
Difficult though it is, you may have to give it some time off. We tell our runners that rest is part of training, but that’s a tough pill to swallow for a guy like you.
She’s right, of course. About all of it. Rest IS part of the training but that IS a tough pill for me to swallow. Still, I’m really trying to resist the need to go for a run today… and maybe this whole week. I do want the ankle to heal itself and stop bothering me. But since I’ve been able to still put up decent times on the ol’ clock results… I don’t know. I’m eating too much and feeling slothful and just generally in a mood and the endorphins and sense of doing *something* that comes with a run is more tempting than any siren’s call at sea.
I’m therefore trying to busy myself with a few maintenance issues. If I’m taking the day as a diagnostic rest-up I thought now might be a good time to do a few assessments as well.
I still haven’t figured out why some of the photos in the Antarctica posts are upside down — that’s a bigger project than I’m prepared to tackle today but one I really should look into.
Instead, I fiddled with the opening page banner and put up two new shots in the scrolling images. One is from Antarctica, snapped by Eric Meyer who had a watermark copyright on there but when the image got cropped for the banner that got cut out. Anyhoo — giving credit where credit is due — that shot is courtesy of photobymeyer.com. The other shot is from Easter Island and since it featured my Mom and my big giant head, it seemed like a good one to toss in there.
And because sometimes what a day off affords is an opportunity to reflect on what has come before, here’s a bit of data mining from this past week’s half marathons. I’m not sure it’s much of an analysis or even reveals all that much but here’s the breakdown on the top ten finishers for each day:
July 10, 2016 – Summer Sensation Half Marathon, Santa Monica, CA — Total Half Marathoners: 48
That Nathan Straubel must have passed some low flying jets — yowza! Anyway, this was my fastest time of the three days of running with A Better World Running and I placed 6th overall. Was it the humidity and weather that had me soaking wet even hours after the event as I sat having breakfast with Brent and Tamela? Shouldn’t that have slowed me down? Was I faster trying to keep up with too fast folks?
July 16, 2016 – Summer Spectacular Half Marathon, Long Beach, CA — Total Half Marathoners: 38
I wound up in second place at this event, again running along the shoreline. Slightly smaller field and the winning time was only a few minutes ahead of me… but to be honest, it was never a contest. Fuminobu Kurosawa was a metronome machine out there. I’m wildly inconsistent in my pace and on top of that I’m just not that fast some days. Overall, though, not a bad finish given the ankle issues plaguing me.
July 17, 2016 – Summer of Fun Half Marathon, Van Nuys, CA — Total Half Marathoners: 37
There were 150 5K runners at this event but only 37 of us Half Marathoners. I wound up with a winning time and felt pretty good running until about mile 9. Right around there my ankle really wasn’t happy with me and let me know in no uncertain terms. It was a warm day, limited shade in the outer half of the loop, and minimal clouds so a lot of direct sun. Still, a bit faster than the day before albeit not as fast as the first day. Not sure if that’s indicative of the toll multi-day events were taking on me or if the ankle is impacting my stride and pace more than I realize. I do know that the smart play is to take a breather this week… but I just scarfed down several handfuls of almonds and am not correctly controlling my binge eating if I’m cutting back on the running. Troubling turns of events… further analysis is warranted but that’s more for me and not very interesting to anyone else. And yet, here I’ve spent a good long portion on just that.
Sigh… some days, some days….