Monday: 6
Westerly, RI. Grills Preserve with Brady. Very sore today, after some high mileage weeks (for me) and four races in the span of seven days. I was pleasantly surprised with the condition of trails at Grills. I do believe the trail maintenance we performed in late June is paying dividends as we will not need to perform as much maintenance on overgrowth as in past years.
Tuesday: 13
Stonington, CT. After taking care of a couple of errands in Mystic, went for my first run in the Saucony Endorphin 2 that I had bought for the Detroit Marathon. I was really excited about these carbon-fiber marathon distance shoes, but unfortunately that excitement morphed into pain and discomfort. Easy to put on, but felt uncomfortably tight in the top of my foot arch area while running. Stopped twice to loosen and adjust the lacing, and I thought that helped. The miles rolled off fairly quickly. In fact, an average pace of 6:29. But when I stopped upon my return to the car at Mystic Y, I had discomfort, so I immediately took off my shoes and then noticed that the toes in my left foot had gone completely numb. I then had some residual pain in my left leg for the rest of the day. Not good.
Spent time researching numb toes while running, and most articles and comments said either poor shoe fit or a lacing issue. But I had tried on a pair 1/2 size larger and even run a bit in them at the store and found them to be too big and felt a little sloppy. So a lacing issue then? One review I read said that the shoe is narrower than most in the midfoot. Well, that would explain the issue. I don't want to get ahead of myself because I've only gone for one run, but I'm starting to get a little worried now.
Wednesday: 9
Exeter, RI. Trails at Arcadia with Brady. Slow and easy on dirt. In addition to last night, during most of this run I continued to fret on my shoe and foot/leg issue from yesterday. I have to move on, so I came up with a 3-tiered approach:
- Slight modifications to existing shoe: try expanding the midfoot space by ice expansion [sounds like a bit of snake oil to me, but several on the 'net swore by it], ease up on the lacing tightness, and wear thinner socks.
- If that fails, order a pair of NB RC Elite V2. They're very hard to find as they're now discontinued and the V3 becomes available two days AFTER my marathon. Of course, right? Reviews indicate they have more room in the midfoot than the Endorphin Pro 2, the stack height is 3mm less, and they're the brand that I typically run in.
- If that fails, either run in my pair of NB Rebel 2 or order the just this week released NB Rebel 3. Neither are carbon plated, but I know they fit with no issues and they are super comfortable.
Having made that decision, I could now relax and just enjoy the rest of my run. Started and finished at the check station on Route 165. Immediately upon finishing, jumped into the Wood River. That was COLD water, so I made sure to dive under water quickly before I wimped out. Oh so refreshing!
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| South Station, Boston, upon disembarking from an Amtrak train I boarded in Westerly. Was in the city for a dinner reunion with eight of my former colleagues at Fidelity. |
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| It was a trip down memory lane for me. At three o'clock is South Station, where I just walked out of, to the left of South Station is where I worked the last few years of my Boston career, and at nine o'clock is Federal Reserve, Boston. |
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| On my walk to the restaurant, along the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, created as a byproduct of the Big Dig pushing the highway underground. I don't think I could ever live in a city, but I do like the vibrancy. |
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| On my way to our restaurant reservation in Long Wharf, this is the famed Boston Tea Party museum. |
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| Some of the many fabulous "starters" at tonight's dinner. Crab, oysters, little necks, shrimp cocktail, tuna poke. I could scarcely touch my dinner when it arrived, which was a shame, because the seared tuna was wonderful. |
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| Had a great time catching up with my former colleagues. The three old guys at the far end are now retired. Enjoyed catching up on each other's updates, family, kids, travels, etc., and reminiscing on work times good and bad, people we respected, people we had loathed, wild late nights on business trips in London, and everything in between. I don't miss any of the stress, phone calls at 2am or on Christmas Day, but I do miss the people. Well, at least these seven. |
Thursday: 9
Hopkinton, RI. Trails again with Brady, this time at Yawgoog and Green Falls Pond. We started in light rain, which progressively increased into a downpour. Fun trails on a day when they were almost completely deserted. Just had to slow it down a bit on slippery rocks and slimy wooden bog bridges.
Mid-run, we stopped at the Green Falls Pond campground beach to swim. Was raining pretty hard, but still felt really good. On the way back, the rain intensified further until it was raining so hard it was getting difficult to see. But it certainly felt really good with the temperature in the high 60s.
Friday: 11 run, 1 walk
Westerly, RI
AM: Walk at Bradford Preserve with town Rec Director, assessing walking path construction thus far and impedances to the Run for the Pumpkins course just eight days away.
AM: 10 mile run from the town beach in my Rebel 2s.
PM: 1 mile test run in my Saucony Endorphin Pro 2s. Fail. Did what I could to re-lace the left shoe to avoid the tightness in the midfoot, plus applied the icing/expansion experiment, but it's a no-go. My toes didn't go numb this time, but I think that's because I only ran a mile. The leg pain came back right away. It's too bad. Great reviews, fast shoe, but just doesn't work for me.
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| I re-laced to avoid the midfoot section, and left the lacing loose. Now the rest of the shoe felt loose and sloppy, while the midfoot area was still just too constricted. Weird. And the next half-size up for me was just too sloppily loose. What a shame. |
Saturday: 1 walk, 7 run
Westerly, RI.
Bradford Preserve. Met up with Justin, Nick, and Heather. First order of business was to clear two blowdowns blocking the trail for the upcoming Run for the Pumpkins run. With everyone pitching in, we cleared that up pretty quickly. Many hands make light work.
Next Brady joined us as we ran the course itself, reviewing intersections for flag and sign placement. There are a lot of turns in the new 10K course, largely because there are a lot of trail intersections there. I led the group completely off-course once when I took a wrong a turn at a 3-way intersection, but fortunately realized and fixed my error pretty quickly. It just reinforces that we'll have to mark the course so that it is very clear at turns.
Sunday: 20
Richmond, RI. Lolly-gagged both at home and upon arrival at Arcadia Y (start/finish of my run). After parking my car, I was "playing" with my phone and one half of my brain was even trying to talk myself out of a long run. Yeah, you should go for just an 8 or 10-miler. That would feel much more comfortable. Fortunately, that side of the brain lost out, and I got my lazy butt out the door and started running.
From that point on, I didn't entertain any thoughts on cutting the run short, although I did entertain thoughts on cutting the planned two 4-mile MP blocks short. Ugh. I'm my own worst enemy sometimes.
MP blocks went better than expected:
- MP block 1 (on dirt): 6:20 (actual target), 6:14, 6:18, 6:09
- MP block 2 (asphalt): 6:19, 5:56 (big downhill), 6:25, 6:09
Felt moderately sore for the rest of the day.
Weekly mileage: 75 run, 3 walk
Weekly synopsis: Another good running week. Now it's taper time for the next three weeks.
Weekly highlight: Getting my last 20-miler in, and hitting my target splits.
Weekly lowlight: Finding out the hard way, painfully actually, that my planned marathon shoe is not to be. On to Plan B.
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