1/20/20: Training Update

Today is 19 days to the Sprouts Mesa Half Marathon. As of a week ago, the longest I had run in training was 4.3 miles. I have a fairly aggressive plan to ramp up the miles, even though I have a potentially-injured leg.

My plan involved limiting road miles as much as possible and building up my distance and stamina on the more-forgiving treadmill, while participating in the Saturday morning CVR Winter Long Runs. This week did not go totally to plan.

I was planning a 50-minute treadmill run for Wednesday, in my quest to continue building up distance. However Wednesday morning my new co-worker Lauren, a dedicated runner, said she was planning to run that afternoon and would I like to join her. Since Lauren is a nice person and having a running colleague helps the miles go by, I said sure.

Lauren also has a bum leg – she pulled a hamstring last summer and it still bothers – so we decided to follow my 5K office route. It goes through the streets of Montpelier, past the State House, and finishes on the bike path. There are a couple of modest hills in there. The sidewalks were pretty clear, though we would get some snow later. Running outside for some reason seems more physically demanding to me than running on the treadmill, and this being the first outside run in a month felt taxing. We finished in an even 30 minutes.

Of course afterward the leg bothered more than I wanted. Sometime during the week I had been speaking with my boss, another runner, and she mentioned that she had a big problem with over-pronation. I had heard the term before, but wasn’t really sure what it was, so I did some research. Basically it means you push off too much with the inside of your foot, and outside-to-inside motion. Since my right foot naturally kicks out, I thought I might be prone to this. I mimicked my stride slowly, and could feel how I was pushing off on the inside of the right big toe – the feeling is supposed to be more centered on the second toe. That’s how my left foot works. So here we have a diagnosis – over pronation of the right foot, and I could feel it directly feeding into the leg soreness.

Why the hell Dr. Tim didn’t look for this, I don’t know.

Regardless, there are a bunch of stretches and exercises for this problem, and I read that orthotic inserts (or shoes) can help. Since I just invested in new shoes, I looked into inserts. Given that I had a Saturday morning training run coming up, I wanted something over the counter. And since I wasn’t 100% sure they would help, I wanted something cheap. The reviews suggested Dr. Scholl’s running orthotic inserts would be a good option. The biggest negative with these is that they don’t last as long as some others. But honestly, my biggest concern is just a few weeks away.

Friday I got to Kinney Drug and bought a pair of inserts. Saturday they were in my Saucony Peregrines for the Winter Long Run in Berlin. A group of about 20 CVR members showed up for the run from one of our member’s house. There were routes from 10K to 10 miles. I chose 10K. This was basically the Berlin Pond race course with the additional distance to and from Beth’s house. It was cold: the temperature was 0 degrees when the run started. The roads around the pond were snow covered but plowed smooth. Not bad footing, but not the most efficient running surface. I chugged along slowly, still feeling out the leg and being mindful of my strides. For a short distance Donna Smyers, a physical therapist, checked out my stride and asked me some questions. She doesn’t think my overpronation is too extreme, and didn’t seem to think I have a big problem on my hands. So that’s nice!

I went skiing on Sunday, which was a bit taxing on my lower legs, especially with some tree runs. Today, Martin Luther King Day, was a day off from work. It was really tempting to go back to the slopes with so a lot of fresh snow on the ground, but the training call beckoned. So I went outside in the afternoon for another run through the streets of Montpelier. I have a 4.7 mile route that I wanted to add a little distance to, so I ran up a big hill to College Street, and also did a little bike path loop to extend it. It was another slow run, with frequently-poor traction and a lot of favor for the leg. But 5.5 miles felt like a good distance for training purposes, and I was done in an hour. I did a bunch of stretching afterward. Tonight my leg feels pretty good.

I’ve run about 15 miles in the week since the last update. I’d like to boost that some this week, but my schedule isn’t looking all that favorable right now. But I am teed up for 8 miles next Saturday, which is the most critical thing right now, I think. Phoenix is coming up. It will be slower than I wanted, but I will survive.