Bamboozled!

I learned this the hard way when I started Gazelles -- never ask how many repeats or laps you are doing. You will get more to do. So began Saturday, when I thought I was doing 17 miles as I am now looking forward to the taper weeks. When are they?

To let the curious know, my left foot is crapping out. It's amazing, all my previous problems started on my right side. After last week's very painful 18 miles, no my left foot is screaming. It hurts most of the time.

I whisk myself off to Pieter who reports that my cuboid, yes, can you believe it, on the left side is starting to complain. I cannot believe it. I have excruciating pain down the outside of my foot. I can only hope, Obi Wan Pieter can fix it. When I tell him what's going on, he doesn't seem surprised. I'm disappointed that I've lost the element of surprise with him. But, he shrugs as he starts to press and prod the foot looking for point of pain. This is about the time when things break down, he says. Luckily, he seems to be able to magically adjust the foot to relieve the pain and moves on the other parts of my body that are acting up. And, there are lots of them.

Troy comes over for a look too and they ask me about my runs. I love these guys, they are genuinely interested in my progress and I feel like I actually have a team on my side. I tell them I wish they could come with me. They start to laugh about how they would sit on the side waiting for me to come by at certain points, crack and adjust, put my shoes back on and send me on my way. I wish! Pit stop, Pieter and Troy and off you go.

Back to the long run. I have a decent week, but my foot still hurts in spite of all of Pieter's work. I run with my son riding his bike by my side one day for recovery, I make it to the gym.

So, I get my head wrapped around 17 with the end at MGP. My foot is killing me part way through the run, so LB says we should just get the miles in and do a pace run on Monday. This is the not first time we've backed off of an MGP run and I am starting to get nervous that I haven't pushed hard enough. The doubts creep in. But,I say ok and we trudge along. Them LB tells me we're doing more than 17, more like 18ish. WHAT? Are you kidding me? It's one mile, but it seems like more.

At one point, we start to pick it up a bit, but I lag behind LB. I am tired of being behind, when we hit Exposition, I start to try to catch him, on the hills. I try to change my stride so that my foot doesn't strike and cause pain and slowly, slowly, I gain ground. Suddenly, I start to feel refreshed. Just like that weekend of the great 22 miler, the pain goes away and I really hit a groove. LB calls out, we're 6 seconds below MGP, 10 seconds below MGP and I push harder and harder.

I feel great, focused. Breathe, push, LB falls back some...Mile 14; 8:14; Mile 15, 7:37; Mile 16, 7:15, Mile 17, 7:04, Mile 18 I drop back to 7:37. I don't see people coming at me, I don't feel pain, I just dig. I am completely surprised by this effort and don't know where it's coming from, but it feels great.

I decide that it might be a good idea for LB to tell me that we're doing a long run, just 22 miles on Boston on April 19th. Then, about mile 20, he can tell, me, oh, yeah, I forgot, we're doing 26.2 and this is the real deal!

2 weeks to go!