This is my first entry in a couple of years. I haven't not run during that time, but I did suffer a frustrating injury maybe three years ago that lead to my not running for at least six months and a less than serious attempt to "get back at it." First the injury: tendinitis. I wanted to follow Sasha's personal advise to increase my mileage. I wanted to go from 30-40 miles a week to 100+. I don't think I over trained or increased my mileage too quickly, but at 70 miles a week I was struck with tendinitis in my right ankle and I couldn't get it to go away. I gave up running for almost six months and every effort afterwards resulted in a reoccurrence of the same injury. I think I tried everything to get better at the time. Three years later I'm at least twenty pounds over racing weight, but I've increased my mileage from 0 to about 25 miles/week. I'm running seven miles at a time and determined to reach my goal of running 35 miles in one day and 100 miles in one week sometime this year. I'm trying to be careful about it. I've incorporated speed, hills and trail work into my runs so that I'm not always doing the same repetitive stuff that likely caused my problem in the first place. We'll see how I do. I'd really like to run the Buffalo 50K at the end of March. I don't know if I'll be ready, though, so I'll test the waters with some longer runs on the weekends during January and February. I ran some of the trail on Antelope Island today and know I'm not ready for the climbs on the first half of the trail just yet. We'll see. I have also developed a neuroma in my left foot. The best remedy for me is to run in Five Fingers since they allow my toes to splay. I've actually been running in them for more than five years, just not full time and definitely not for these distances. I really enjoyed running in a new pair of KSO Sports I got for Christmas today. |