Back....to the Future!

We interrupt the old race photo slide show to come back to March 2010 for a bit.

It's the beginning of spring break here, which doesn't mean much for me except that it's a great time for me to run my peak training week. Of course, this training cycle has been almost comically fraught with problems. Injury, increased stress in day-to-day life, and now-I've been sick. Yeah, par for the course, right? I've been sore, achy and congested off and on more or less since the Moab race in mid-February. Thinking it was going away, I'd just been going out and getting in my runs but they haven't been awesome.

A few days ago, I began to feel worse. I'd been living on Sudafed (the get-it-from-your-pharmacist, good kind), which I don't like to do-but hey, I could breathe. After a terrible run on Thursday that should have been twelve but ended at ten because I was hacking up a lung along with my non-functioning nose, I finally made it in to the doctor's office. I saw a physician's assistant who was a fellow runner who thankfully understood that over two weeks of sinus problems that were spreading was enough. She even looked around at the calendar and said "Wow, just two weeks to Canyonlands!" Now I'm already on my second dose of the Z-Pac, so I should return to the land of the living in a day or two.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, SPRING is trying to return. Oh yeah. I was questioning what the point was of this terrible winter we've had here, and I guess maybe it was to really appreciate the return of better days where the temps are above freezing, and the three month layer of permafrost has melted away. I've definitely got the spring fever, and it's showing in my running. I'm definitely convinced with 20/20 hindsight that the origin of my leg pain was running tense and tight all the time over that slippery stuff on the ground. I can feel now how much more relaxed my running's become.

There has also been an unexpected benefit from the snow and ice running. I'm plodding and dragging my feet a little less. The knees are coming up a bit more naturally and without me thinking about it with less of that foot-shuffling thing. So, the whole injury and learning to run with better form deal hasn't been all bad.

So, Boston is now a little more than six weeks away! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I had not really been allowing myself to get excited about it or set goals, but sinus infections aside, I've been letting some of the enthusiasm about the trip, and race day, creep in. I just ordered my S-Caps Combo Pack that has worked so well in past marathons, and a new pair of OxySox because I'm doing a great job of shredding my existing pairs. I've allowed myself to look at the Celebration Jackets, going back and forth between thinking they're cool, and thinking they bear a strong resemblance to those Nascar jackets. It's gone from a race far off in the distant future to being a day that is almost here. I'll be going out for twenty in an hour or two, and it'll be one of my last runs that long before Patriots Day.

With that, I'll leave you with this little movie a fellow Boston runner created-just a little something for the runners to appreciate. I must admit-on some of those 5 degree days, I would rather have been training for a "5K Marathon."