Thus begins the big week

Feeling ok this morning. Just a bit stiff, but that should improve as I move around a bit more. Nothing hurts, so that's good.

This Saturday is the big TWENTY. This week I will need to mentally prepare almost, if not more, than physically prepare. It worked well yesterday with my thoughts and music and distractions. I *have* to keep the messages from the left brain contained. There's lots of good info on ways to do that outlined in the marathon book I'm reading. So much of this running stuff is mental. It's crazy.

Yet another thing I can think about while I run...my form. George & Julie pointed out a problem yesterday that they saw with my arms and upper body. I was twisting my upper body and almost crossing my arms in front of my chest. Need to keep my arms tighter at my side, parallel with my body. I need to use that energy to move me forward. Julie said a high school track coach said to pretend there are ropes along your sides and you are grabbing them and pulling yourself forward. I have grown to recognize when I am holding my shoulders up too high or when I can lower my hips a bit. All that form stuff - it does make a difference. And every bit of energy I have needs to be directed forward. FORWARD MOVEMENT!

Even though it is Sunday, I am a bit concerned about the weather for Saturday. The week looks to be a warm one with highs in the 80s by the end of the week. Of course, that can change several times by Saturday. But if it is that warm, I'll need to think about wearing my hydration belt. I got so hot yesterday and was ready for the water way before we got to it. Can't let that happen.

My plan for the week: I will do lots of stretches and maybe some Pilates today to loosen everything back up. I've got a set of strengthening exercises that I've been doing - I can do those every day too. I'll probably walk on Monday and Wednesday and run on Tuesday and Thursday. Rest on Friday. RUN ON SATURDAY!!

So, we begin the week of the 20! THINK TWENTY!!!!

A detour and a slight rerouting prevents a derailment

I gave in today and saw Nanette the PT about my continued knee pain. I told her I had self-diagnosed myself with the IT band ouchy thing and I had been doing stretches, ice, NSAIDS, etc. but needed to make sure I was on track. She wanted to take a look to see if I was doing the right stretches.

You should be doing this. Check.
And this. Check.
And this. Check.
And get a foam roller and use that every day. Check.

So, I am doing everything I needed to do. Glad about that. She put another one of those cortisone patches on my knee. Remember those? She suggested getting a few more next week.

I'm laying off tomorrow. I know that if I can't walk down the hall without discomfort, then I do not need to be running 16 miles all over Shelby Farms. Or even 1 mile for that matter. So, rest it is. I'm ok with that. Because I know that I've got to back off when I'm hurting. I have got to listen to my body. There's just some pain you can't push through, nor should you. I've learned that.

George if you're reading this, you should probably quit at this point. Nanette also suggested that I alter my training plan a little bit. I can't run 5's and 9's during the week and then take on a long run on the weekend. My body just can't keep up. And it shouldn't take an entire week to recover from the weekend's long run. All I really want to do is run and have fun doing it. It shouldn't hurt all the time. Nanette said the main goal from this point forward is to help my body recover and stay healthy. She assured me I was on track and could remain on track even with this detour and rerouting.

Now don't get me wrong, George is a great coach. He is patient (Wow is he patient. He has probably wished more than once that he never talked me into doing this marathon thing....) and he is encouraging and I think he's proud of his peeps. He totally knows his stuff. He's a REAL. RUNNER. For Pete's sake, he's running the Boston Marathon next weekend. Again. And he's already qualified to run it in 2009 too. If you will remember, he says things like "a nice little 15-miler" and "I like hills". He's run 23 some-odd marathons in just 4 years. He. Is. A. Runner. And I'm not. And I'm not trying to say he's totally killing me with this training schedule. Well, maybe that IS what I'm trying to say.

The long and the short of it is, I am going to have to slightly rewrite my training plan to accommodate my body. If I don't, I don't think I will be able to hold up. I didn't enter this challenge as a runner. I didn't enter this challenge to become a runner. I remind all of my faithful readers what my goals are for the marathon: (1) to raise money and awareness for the Leukemia Society, (2) to honor and remember my Daddy, (3) to finish in a vertical position. And at this point, I am on track to do all those things.

Happy Birthday Boys!

Happy Birthday today to Jodi and my nephew Trenton!

I celebrated their special day by sleeping in an extra hour. After all, it is an off day. I had grand plans of getting up at the usual 4am and doing one of my stability ball exercise DVDs, but chose to sleep instead. The exercise would have been the better choice since my calves and ankles are sore and super stiff today.

I will have to do some stretches and exercises tonight without fail. The more I stretch and strengthen those muscles, the better they will become. Then I can run a little faster. Also they will just quit hurting, aching, burning, ouching all the time. I just wish I wasn't 'feeling it' all the time. I had that a few days toward the end of last week. But that was before I did my 10, so they are achey (how do you spell that? it looks weird) again.

The rest of the week shapes up like this:

• Wednesday - 5 miles (I may have to break this into AM & PM because of time. We'll see)
• Thursday - 3 miles
• Friday - off
• Saturday - 8 miles
  

It will all be OK

The day after.....

I think I can finally talk about the Tiger game without crying. Tough loss. I'm just sad they lost. At home. To Tennessee. I'm sure we'll plummet in the polls. The media loves to hate us. Guess the loss had to come sometime. Maybe I'm glad it came now during regular season than later during the tourny. I hope there's a #1 seed in our future. Although that does add much more pressure. Oh the stress of it all! Can't wait for March Madness to begin - truly the *best* time of the sports year. GO TIGERS!

Thanks to all who commented or emailed or called or just gave me some encouragement yesterday while I was D-O-W-N about not running. I think I did work through that disappointment and am seeing the importance of the decision. Just a small detour early on is better than a major derailment later. I do want to complete this training and FINISH THE MARATHON so bad. I realized just how bad yesterday. Plus, Daddy would really give me the what for if I continued to try to run while I'm messed up. I don't want to let anybody - especially him - down during this quest.

The good news is that I THINK my legs may be some better. I alternated ice with heat last night and again today. And I've switched over to Alleve. Maybe the combination of those things (along with the laying off) has given me some improvement. I am not feeling the constant burning and pain today. Only an occasional twinge of ouchness. That is a first for me in about a week. Maybe I'm turning a corner here... I hope so!

I'm thinking I'll need to alter my training schedule again this week. I'll have to take a look. I'll get some pilates in tomorrow and Tuesday. Maybe a little walking and then maybe by Wednesday or Thursday, I could put in a mile or so to see how I'm feeling. I think I'm scheduled for 10 on Saturday. Wonder how that will play out. I will just take it slow. And be ok with that.

On another note, I read a few blogs of other runners - most of them are a bit more seasoned than me. Some are TNT members too. But I get a lot of info and advice by just reading their stories. I found one blog belonging to Roxie in NY. She is devoted TNT runner who lost a dear friend to Lymphoma. She is now training for her third marathon. (She ran San Diego in 2007!) I made a comment on her blog Friday about how I had discovered her blog, was struggling with some injury, why I was doing TNT, etc. She, in turn, replied with a nice encouraging comment. I was reading her post today where she detailed her 16 mile run yesterday (WOW!). She listed the things that kept her going during the last stretch of her run. One thing was "a comment from a reader (thanks angie!)". That made me feel really good. Then I started thinking that while I was feeling all sorry for myself yesterday morning, I was actually encouraging somebody at that exact time. And that was a nice feeling and helped me check out of my pity party.

So see.....it will ALL be OK.

Heart attack

That's how I felt after the Tigers pulled off a win last night. It came down to the wire and even then, there was some controversy. And a bit of a fracas. UAB was ready for the Tigers and they wanted to win, no doubt. Tigers were down by 7 with a little over a minute to go. But Chris Douglas-Roberts converted a 3-point play with about 6 seconds left. (It was his game last night, that's for sure.) Then UAB made a basket a split second too late. Tigers win. WHEW! The UAB fans thought the basket counted, and they rushed the floor. Rumor has it they were spitting on the Tigers and throwing pompoms, cups and bottles at them. Heartbreaker for UAB that's for sure. But c'mon.

Apparently ESPN.com thought we were going to lose (or had lost), because this is what they had on their website minutes after we won. (Thanks to my blog contributor, Anne, for this submission!)
"IMPERECT"And then there were none. No. 1 Memphis is unbeaten no longer. UAB, on the back of sharp shooter Robert Vaden, knocked off the lone perfect team in Division I on Saturday night. UAB XX, Memphis XX

What a game! GO TIGERS!!!

I feel ok this morning, just a little sore in the legs. Am headed to church shortly reeking of Icy Hot.

Training schedule for the week:

• Sunday - cross train
• Monday - 3 miles
• Tuesday - rest
• Wednesday - 4 miles
• Thursday - 3 miles
• Friday - rest
• Saturday - 9 miles

It's Tuesday

Pilates for me this morning. I still need to go exchange my duplicate DVD. I also think I'm going to get a new DVD too. I'm a bit tired of "pushing through the thick molasses".

Training schedule for the rest of the week:

• Wednesday - 4 miles
• Thursday - 3 miles
• Friday - rest
• Saturday - 7 miles

Rain is wet, but 63 degrees feel pretty darn good

It was just misting a little bit this morning when I headed out. I don't check the weather before I go out in the mornings; I only check the low the night before. I don't want anything to discourage me from heading out in the morning. So, last night's low was 58 and I dressed accordingly. It was nice to not have to put on all those layers. I also only wore an ear band instead of my wooly little hat. I found out pretty quick that the ear band is not a friend of the iPod ear buds....there were some issues there. I also found out that when it starts raining, a cap is in order. I was wiping the rain off my face. It wasn't real hard rain, but it was enough for me to think that I was a bit nuts for tackling today's run outside. But, I did it. All three miles. And I only had to stop one time. Small victory there. About the time I finished up, the bottom really fell out of the sky. Good timing there.

I do think that I almost have the Nike thing set on my iPod. The Nike Voice Man did give me accurate distance today. (I drove my route in the car last night and also wore a pedometer this morning.) Nike Voice Man was pretty cool too. I set the distance I am going to run and then select "begin workout". Then, along the run he would tell me when I was 0.5 miles, 1.0 miles, etc. Then he said something about "workout half way completed". That was pretty good timing because that is when it was raining pretty good. But his encouragement, along with 'Brick House' by the Commodores on my iPod, encouraged me to continue. Once I got half way, Nike Voice Man started counting down the distance. So that's a nice little push too. And, since this was the first real callibrated run that I've done with the Nike+iPod, it registered as a "personal best" and I got a congratulations message from Lance Armstrong. How about that! Other music that kept me moving this morning was The Cars, OK Go, and Good Charlotte.

My shins did not hurt this morning as much as my calves. So I'm chalking that up to success because maybe it's more muscle today than bone. I can work through shin splints, but I do not want a stress fracture. I'm hopeful some of the soreness is because of the stretches I'm doing. I'm still holding out for progress to be made as a result of my new fancy running shoes and the exercises Nanette gave me. Plus, I have to remember that I've only been doing this distance stuff a little over a week.

Overall, a very nice, albeit wet, morning.

Training schedule for the week:

• Sunday - cross training (did Pilates yesterday)
• Monday - 3 miles (done!)
• Tuesday - off
• Wednesday - 3 miles
• Thursday - 3 miles
• Friday - off
• Saturday - 6 miles

Progress made:
Nike+iPod successfully calibrated.

Lesson learned:
Even the slightest bit of mist or rain really calls for a cap.

The week ahead

Realized late yesterday that I've got to do the whole long run thing again this Saturday. And the next, and the next, and the next.....

On the training schedule for this week:

• Sunday - cross train (I worked with Polly Pilates this morning before church. Felt good to stretch.)
• Monday - 3 miles
• Tuesday - rest
• Wednesday - 3 miles
• Thursday - 3 miles
• Friday - rest
• Saturday - 4 miles - group run

Am trying to figure out how I will manage the long weekly runs since my time frame is very limited. I don't mind getting up at 4am, but once the miles start getting larger, I can't be getting up at 2am...... Maybe my pace will be a bit faster by then and it won't take as long. I'm sure it will all work out.

Progress made:
Got out of bed and was able to walk.

Need to work on:
Develop a 3-5 mile route that will keep me in my neighborhood since I'll be doing this at 4am. Just need to be safety conscious. I'm not fast enough to outrun anybody yet. Then again, who is out at 4am....

I'm excited!

Went to the TNT kick-off tonight. Sadly, didn't meet Nicole. Didn't meet anybody else on the San Diego team, although George said the count is now up to EIGHT! Good to hear. I can kind of get lost in a crowd eight maybe.... I did meet our mentor Julie. Not sure what that means really. But I think she is running San Diego too. Or at least going. Probably running.

There were some people there who had done marathons before. And there were some people just like me. Some 'jogger-walker' people.

We picked up our training schedule. This Saturday says "3". I was hopeful that this was THREE MINUTES, but George quickly said it was MILES. Too bad. The training schedule is two pages. The last run at the bottom of page one is April 5 and is 15 miles. I was scared to turn to page two...

I left there very excited. Tonight this whole marathon thing seems very doable.