My current problem, is that one day I'm feeling great about it, the next day I feel awful, then back to feeling great...so nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how it goes. Contributing to my yo-yo emotions, would be my terrible run 2 1/2 weeks ago (Wright's Lake) and then my awesome double runs 1 1/2 weeks ago (18 Miler + IPR to Upper Camp Bird 15 Miler). And then there's this past weekend - Labor day. I did nothing. I'm completely serious. For someone who's been running around all over the place this summer (quite literally), it felt strange.
It wasn't my plan to do nothing. See, at the start of last week, I was generally feeling awesome (and maybe a little bad a$$ after my 33 miles of running the weekend before). My only complaint, and it wasn't a serious complaint (yet), was a large blister in between by big toe and second toe. Well, on Monday I did some cross training (no harm there) but then on Tuesday, I decided to go for a run again. Nothing big - just a short 2 miler on the treadmill at Gold's Gym (oh and by the way, I officially signed my life away and joined Gold's about 2 weeks ago).
So I get home from this short 2 mile run and take my shoes off. What had just been a very large blister, was now this even larger disgusting blood blister. It did not look good at all. I'm talking the entire inside of my big toe - so about 1" long by about 1/4" wide, filled with blood.
Well with Imogene coming up, I didn't want to risk making it worse, so I pretty much took an entire week off from running. Well not pretty much - I did. A whole week without running...right before my biggest and toughest race up to this point! I still went to the gym a couple times and rode the bike or did the Elliptical. But my main concern was not to put any kind of pressure on my toe, in a hopes that it would heal.
Unfortunately, this meant no hiking over Labor Day. What could be my last weekend of summer weather and I didn't get to go hiking. Ugh, the sacrifices I'm making for running...I do love it, but I was really bummed about this. Overall, I didn't do nearly as much hiking as I wanted to this year. I had so many others I wanted to do - Uncompahgre Peak, Handies Peak, West Maroon Trail, Mary's Highland Lakes...I could keep going (but I won't). So this was my disappointment for the weekend - sacrificing a beautiful Labor Day weekend for the following weekend's Imogene Pass Run.
So anyways, the point of my rant, is just that Imogene better go well and it better be worth it! I've sacrificed a lot for this race, and I just hope it pays off. I've had good runs, bad runs, and so-so runs. I've put a lot of sweat into this and countless hours (days if you include drive time into the mountains).
This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed it. It's kind of been a love/hate thing. I hate getting up earlier on the weekends than I do during the week, but I love the feeling when I'm done. Or when I truly stop and "smell the roses" - or in my case, the pine trees. Mountain running really is a unique and wonderful thing to experience. So, here's to a hopefully good race in what is now 2 days, 17 hours, 0 minutes, 10 seconds!
Oh and just for fun, check out the course profile:
Note - I wrote this 2 days ago, but didn't remember to actually publish it, hence why my "2 days" is now less than 1 day...eek! But I look forward to updating you all on how it goes!
No comments:
Post a Comment