As noted, the Pasadena Marathon was cancelled due to the poor air quality caused by fires on three sides of Pasadena. The dearth of blog posts in the final six weeks leading up to the marathon stemmed from nagging injuries that kept me from following the training regimen through that period.
The most debilitating of the injuries were the pains in my calves. The first occurrence of pain came on a day we were suppose to run three 1-mile repeats. My legs were spent from a CrossFit workout a day or two before, in which we did a large number of med-ball cleans mixed in with push-ups. Laurence and I worked through that one side by side, and we both felt the effects of the squats. My silliness came in trying to run the mile repeats with tired legs. I got through the first two of them well enough: somewhere around 6:20 or 6:30 per mile. But three-quarters of the way into the third mile I felt a pain in the calf and walked the rest of the way in.
After that day, I went through a series of weeks in which one calf or the other would stop me from running anything faster than a seven- or eight-minute mile. This put a serious dent in my mid-tempo training, and speed work was completely out of the question. On one Friday in particular, I tried to run six miles but was able to make it through only 1.5 of the six miles before my calves stopped me. But here is an amazing trick: that Friday night, I got a agonizingly painful calf massage from Beth. Thanks to the massage, I was able to run twelve miles (of 17 scheduled) on the very next day!
During the six weeks, I trained when able, including running the Long Beach Half Marathon with Jeff and Jim and putting in a 20-mile training run three weeks before the marathon. I did some of these runs with pains in my calves and some with pain in my right foot. The foot pain was so sharp (and new to me) that I visited my podiatrist (Dr. Mark Kidon) to rule out any fractures. He diagnosed me with peroneal tendinitis and recommended rest and massage to treat.
Taht worked well enough, and on marathon day I felt just well-enough patched up that I believe I could have completed the 26.2 miles in about 3:45:00. And though my knees, calves, and feet would have been in pain afterwards, I am pretty sure I would not have suffered any permanent damage.
I recently received notice from the organizers of the marathon that they secured a date to run a rescheduled Pasadena Marathon on March 22. I have not yet decided whether or not to run the marathon on this new date, but I am leaning against it. Training for too many other athletic events lies between now and then: Mount Wilson Trail Race, CrossFit Games, Masters National Weightlifting, Caltech Soccer Club…. and marathon training is all-consuming and fairly specialized. If I do not run the full marathon, I will probably run the half marathon. I feel I can run that distance well enough without too much change in my training routine.
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