best laid plans

I’m training for my first half marathon. Or, rather, I’m supposed to be training for my first half marathon. What I’m actually doing is lying on the couch, where I dragged myself this morning from the bed, trying not to stand up too fast lest I get dizzy and fall on my face. It was not a pretty scene when I hauled my fever-adled self out of bed a little too quickly, sat down next to Nicholas on the floor, and promptly passed out. Good thing I was already near the ground. So yeah, I’m sick. This is day two of the great fever, sore throat and lethargy of May 2010. Thankfully, it does seem to be getting better. The fever seems to have abated, it no longer feels like I’m swallowing knives (just sharp rocks), and I can stand up for more than 30 seconds without getting lightheaded. Let’s hope this trend continues. [UPDATE: Found out the day after I posted this I have strep throat. Awesome, right? So I'm on antibiotics now, and hoping this crap goes away quickly!]

But back to that half marathon. I’m registered to run the LA Rock ‘n’ Roll 1/2 Marathon on October 24, 2010. It will be a year almost to the day since I started running, and it seemed a good milestone to hit at that point in my running life. Lots of people start running and almost immediately decide to run a marathon. I’m not that guy. Since deciding I want to run barefoot, I’ve consciously taken it slowly, building endurance and improving my running form carefully. It hasn’t actually been slowly and carefully enough to avoid all issues. I’ve had minor problems with my ankles, calves, achilles, and recently my knee, most of them directly related to pushing too far and doing too much, too soon. I guess it might be easier to start being physically active at 16 or 26 than at 36, especially since my soft choirboy history has meant I’ve done almost nothing athletic since my parents stopped making me play peewee soccer, which I truly sucked at.

But, I digress. I decided early on I wouldn’t consider running a marathon until I’d been running regularly for at least a year. So I signed up for this 1/2 at the one year mark, and figured after that I’d reevaluate and decide what’s next. I’m already thinking a marathon in 2011 might be in the cards, but I gotta get through this 1/2 first. So, I made a plan. I’ve been reading Daniel’s Running Formula, recommended to me by a sports doc friend and several others on dailymile. This Jack Daniels guy, in addition to making some kick ass whiskey, is also apparently a pretty good running coach. This book is about hard core running training, and he’s got programs for everything from 800 meters to the marathon. So, using the book, I mapped out my 1/2 marathon training schedule. Considering the way my life works, I knew I wouldn’t stick 100% to the plan. I’m sure I’ll shift a workout from one day to another and probably even skip one here and there. The plan I’ve created is more than enough to get me comfortably through the race, so I’m fine with all that. But I didn’t really expect to be taking the second week of my training plan almost completely off. Between this knee pain that cropped up last week and this knock-me-on-my ass sickness thing that started yesterday, this has not been a banner running week.

Missing a week of training, especially with the race still many months away, doesn’t worry me. What does worry me is the thought that my body may not let me do what I want to do. Until now, my running has been pretty free form. I’ve run when I wanted to, and when I could make time. I never had an an official weekly mileage goal, and I certainly never had a training plan. Now that I do, it bothers me when I can’t at least come close to sticking to it. Though it builds up slowly, the plan maxes out at 40 miles a week. I’ve never run much over 20. What if my body can’t take that kind of mileage? Though it mostly focuses on pretty easy running, the plan includes some tempo runs and speed work. What if things break down when I try to run fast?

None of this is worth losing a lot of sleep over, I know. If it turns out running 20 miles a week is as much as I can take and stay injury-free, well, that’s a hell of a lot more than I was running a year ago (0 miles a week). And if running distance races isn’t for me, that’s OK too. I like running, and I’d keep doing it even if I could rarely make it into double digits in a single run.

The reason all this bothers me as much as it does, I think, is that for the last few months,  running has been the part of my life that’s been going really well. It’s fun, my friends are inspired by it, and it’s helped me get really healthy for the first time in a while. Other aspects of my life, particularly on the work front, have not been so great. There have been some glimmer of hope there in the last few days, but it’s still a source of worry. So, to see a crack in the plaster of the thing that has really been helping me hold it all together, that worries me. But I’m not gonna let it stop me.

I’ll get over this illness, I’ll work out this knee thing, and I’ll get back to running. And working. For actual money. And not worrying so damn much. On that note, I give you a photo from the XTERRA Malibu Creek Trail Race a couple weeks back. It was a tough race, and I ran it well. Despite the fact I think it was the beginning of my knee woes, I was certainly having fun when this shot was taken. I’m sure I’ll get back there soon.

Tagged as: barefoot, running