Another resting HR day for me. I didn't even bother taking my running stuff to work with me today. I woke up feeling a little more stuffed up than yesterday, but felt a little better overall. I think I am down to the final stage...lots of coughing, lots of flem and lots of fun. Instead of bore you with more mr. sickness stories, I will give you a synopsis of my very exciting day. I spent the majority of the day working on Active projects (as I always do) and TennisLink customers. Not particularly eventful, but in my free time I have been working on developing my profile on a social-networking site called Daily Mile. It is a great site for multi-sport athletes to share miles achieved for given workouts as well as short notes on these workouts and how they felt. The functionality is really simple and pretty fun. You can compare mileage with the mileage of your friends as well as post races and events that you are competing in. If you are interested in that type of stuff you should check it out and friend me.

Yet another day nursing the sickness. I am going to see how everything feels a little later and possibly (unlikely) get a run in. I don't want to put myself in a position to get even more sick, so I may just sit back, continue to inhale Vitamin C and rest. These past few days have been pretty brutal as my foot is finally starting to come around, but now my immune system says no way Jose. I am trying to keep my head up and just know that the quality sessions are around the corner. December tends to be a pretty hectic time of year with all of the stresses that surround Christmas. It always seems to be more of a stressful time of year than relaxing. Get over this hump and its smooth sailing (errrr maybe) until Carlsbad.

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Today was supposed to be a tempo run for 35 minutes, but I woke up this morning at 5 with a horribly sore throat. I could barely swallow and it killed everytime I tried to do so. I got up and grabbed a glass of water and tried to sleep it off. I finally got up at 10 and made some breakfast. I laid on the couch watching College Football and thought that it would be best if I rested today and not risk getting any sicker in the coming week, as I will be travelling at the end of the week and I really need to start up my mileage by the end of the week on my runs. Hopefully I can make up this run tomorrow if I am feeling better. The majority of the day has been pretty groggy, so it's a good thing that I kept it low key.

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Today I ran the 5K/10K Run for the Hungry with my accomplice, Tank. We ran the 5K. It was a good time as Tank was huffing and puffing about a mile into the run. I was running in front of him with the leash tight for the last half of the run, but he made it. I had to slow down a few times so that he could catch his breath and we had to make 1 potty break, but other than that, it was a solid run. I'm not sure how long it took us, as the main clock was the only timing mechanism and we probably didn't realistically get started for 3 minutes after the gun went off. We finished (clock time) 28 minutes and some odd seconds. Not bad for a 3 minute delay, a potty break and a few slow ups. There were a lot of people and a lot of people with dogs, so that was really cool. Had a nice Thanksgiving feast afterwards. Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving!

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Well friends, I'm back at it. It has been a little over 20 days since I last posted and the reason being my training has mellowed to almost a standstill up until this last week. I have been biking a good deal, but nothing that has really had a whole lot of structure, hence no recent posts. My running has been non-existent for about a month now, and I have been seeing a doctor over the past few weeks. I had strained my brevis tendon, laid off of it for 2 weeks (spent 1 week completely free of any training) and then gave it a go a week ago yesterday. Immediately, more pain in the same spot. I finished up a 25 minute run enraged. I got on the phone and scheduled an appointment that evening. I was given a cortisone shot as well as some sort of "coolant" for the tendon and was advised to give it 3 days before testing out the run again. I ran last Friday and felt no pain for a good 10 minutes...Progress! I stopped, stretched and then ran another 10 minutes and felt ok. I road close to 75 miles this weekend (a little less than 20 on Sat, and 55 on Sun.) and went in to see the Dr. again yesterday. Things are getting better, but taking it easy when it comes to running is imperative. It also became evident yesterday that the entire length of my brevis tendon (starting at the top of my calf extending all the way to my heel and then around to my 5th metatarsel) is pretty "fired up" as the doctor puts it. It is really tender, so I am going to be starting Physical Therapy at the end of next week. The reason I decided to bring the posts back today is because I told myself that getting serious about my upcoming season (starting with Carlsbad Half-Marathon on Jan. 25) needed to start and if I am going to finish Carlsbad feeling strong, my running needed to get going (even if it's a little at a time) and I have been working pretty hard on getting a solid set of training plans in place. Between the Triathlete's Training Bible and Daniel's Running Formula, you can't go wrong. I feel like every day is a learning experience as far as training is concerned and that is what makes all of this so much fun for me. I am excited to dig a little bit deeper into the data in the upcoming months and have decided to work hard on tracking my HR stats and basing a lot of my pacing and workouts on the vitals, like I did in college.

So back with the running: Today I told myself a 20-25 minute run would be a success and I got to about 15 minutes today with no pain, so again, progress! I walked for a couple minutes and then finished out the run back to my apartment. Just a short run, sub 3 miles. I was stopped at a few lights as well as a few cross-walks, so I'm unsure as to what my real run time was, but my HR was pretty heavy in Zone 4 as you can see. I felt really good and surprisingly not out of breath. All my cycling has really helped build a solid cardio base and I am really happy that my body is in such great shape after the long break from running.





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I woke up this morning feeling the foot pain again when I hopped out of bed and decided to take it easy, maybe hop on the bike in the afternoon if I feel up to it. I have been nursing the foot more and more, keeping ice on it and stretching it out as much as I can. I do think I am moving in the right direction, its just a matter of being smart about my workouts until the foot gets better.

I hit the road for a run today to see how the foot was going to handle it, and it did pretty well. Not as much pain as there was a couple weeks ago although there is still something going on down there. I think that the rest helped out a lot and I need to continue nursing it back to 100%. The next run I do I think will be significantly shorter. I want to slowly build my foot back up. I ran a little harder than I really needed to today, but in the end it was a great feeling to know that things are moving in the right direction. The run today was for 32 minutes, and at the end I was in a little bit more pain than is necessary (more cardio/chest pain than foot pain), but hey, no pain, no gain.

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