A bit under the weather

Unfortunately I've been a bit under the weather and had to take an unplanned break in my training. About 1-1/2 weeks ago I finished a 70 mile week and thought that I was going to have a good shot at doing about four 70 - 75 mile weeks before I started to taper for the Houston marathon. My training was going well and I had some really good workouts and I was feeling really good about my training. A little over a week ago I started to come down with a cold the day before we left to visit my parents for Christmas and I've been under the weather ever since and haven't run in about a week. I was pretty congested and felt generally miserable with flu-like aches. I had been looking forward to doing some high elevation and hill running for a week in New Mexico, but I spend most of the time resting instead. We flew back to Houston on Monday and I literally thought one of my eardrums might burst from all the pressure on the descent. My left ear had stopped up so bad and the pressure in my ear didn't go away for over 12 hours after we landed. I went to the doctor on Tuesday and was told that I had ear infections in both ears so now I'm on antibiotics and hopefully I will be feeling better shortly.

I also went to the podiatrist yesterday because I had something bothering me on the bottom of my foot that was getting increasingly annoying and he told me I had a good sized wart on my foot right behind my toes. He burned it off and gave me some topical medicines that will hopefully prevent it from reforming and I'm supposed to go back in for a check on it the week before the marathon. My foot's been a little sore today and I'm hoping to get a run in tomorrow and do a semi-long run with the Kenyan Way on Friday and ramp my training back up for a couple of weeks.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a has a happy new year.

Need to update the blog more

It's been a busy month and I haven't done a great job keeping up with the blog. My training is coming along reasonably well, but I really haven't gotten my mileage up as high as I really should. I've been doing about 60 miles a week, but with a soon to be 3 month old, it's been harder to take the time to get the additional miles in. My long runs and hard workouts have been going fairly well so that has been encouraging. I ran 18 miles on Saturday and averaged 7:00 pace. It was a pretty miserable run the first 7 or 8 miles and I was struggling some just to stay with the group, but from about mile 9 on I finally woke up or started feeling better and had a good finish to the run. Suzanne commented to me this morning that after my long runs I didn't seem as useless all day or complain as much about my legs being in pain as I have in years past. I do feel like they are stronger/healthier which is a good feeling going into the last 8 weeks until the marathon.

I was exhausted from a long weekend so I didn't try to get up to run hills this morning and did a speed workout at lunch instead. I ran a 5 x 1 mile workout with an easy 1/4 mile jog between which worked out to a little over 2 minutes recovery after each one. I didn't really know how fast I would run them, but I went into the workout with a goal of being sub 5:40 on the first and then between 5:30 - 5:35 for the rest. The weather was cool and felt good for a workout. After a 2 mile warmup, strides, drills and some stretching I started the workout. My splits were 5:34, 5:29, 5:25, 5:25, 5:22. It was tough, but a good workout and I got about 9 miles total in on the day.

I'd like to find a good race sometime in the next 5 weeks for a tune up before the marathon. I had wanted to run the Dallas/White Rock 1/2 marathon this past weekend but had a conflict come up and I couldn't make it. Life with our daughter has been lots of fun and she's been a happy and easy baby. Here are a few pictures of her. Suzanne won't let me post any pictures of her diaper explosions, but her are a few nice ones of her.