So marathon training, and training for whatever else, has gone pretty good up to this point. I've been running basically everyday, have been feeling fine, so on and so forth. What could go wrong? Well Monday night I went off to do a 20 mi run, and 1.5 miles into it - BAM! - shin splints in my left leg. It twinged a bit on me before the run, when I was moving a mini-fridge for a friend, but I thought it would clear up as I ran. Oops, guess not. In retrospect, my current running shoes and the insoles probably have enough miles on them to replaced. And walking around barefoot all day at Noah's Ark, America's largest waterpark, on Sunday probably didn't help any either. While I can't change the past, I can get new shoes. Shoe Shack here I come!
As I mentioned though, everything up to this point has been going pretty well. First I guess I should mention that I finally got my bike back. Brand new frame and it's white like the old one, and this years model, and better, and more carbon! Safe to say, I've been tooling around on that during my running rest days. It seems slightly lighter than the old frame, which makes sense. It's very nice to have a bike back again.
Secondly I ran the Elvelopet 15k for Nordic Fest on July 29th. I didn't do as good as I wanted to or as good as I thought I would. My finish time was 1 hr 13 min 48 sec, but I think I could have done a good deal better, maybe 5 mins better...if I didn't wake up and run most of the way with a slight hangover. I didn't think I had that much to drink the night before, but I guess I am in college, and I had to introduce some friends to house partying. So maybe its not ALL my fault?
I got my bike back the weekend before the Elvelopet, so I looked at my calendar and saw, "what do we have here?" - the State RR in two weeks. So the week leading up to the Elvelopet I did three double days in a row, running in the early afternoon and biking in the late afternoon. Hmm...maybe that could have fatigued me a bit for the race. Anyway, the week after the Elvelopet, the week leading up to the RR, all I did was biking. Many of my bike rides in the two weeks was in the rain, which was great! I don't know what it is but I can haul ass in the rain. Anyway, moving on to the race, I didn't do that bad considering I had only ridden my bike for two weeks prior to the race. I was up in the main pack up until the second lap when a rider went down in front of me which caused the pack to split up. I had basically caught up to the lead pack on the second biggest hill of the course but then I dropped my chain. I got a push start from the race official who was luckily in the truck following right behind me. However by the time I got back going again, the lead pack was gone and there was no way off catching back up by myself, as all the riders I passed were fading. So I just picked off the stragglers and rode it like a fast tempo training ride. I placed mid-pack, but like I said, not bad for only riding 2 weeks. Also almost 1/3 of the riders dropped out, so that was an added boost of confidence.
Since the race weeks I've just been trying to fit back into my marathon training schedule, move to my dorm for the year, and enjoy my summer. Hopefully I'll be better in updating this, and won't have a gap of almost 2 months again. Thats all for now, I need to ice my shin...
