The New Year spirit is dispirit

With the year coming to a resounding close it seems to be as good a time as any to evaluate the first four-week section of my marathon training and look forward to the next fourteen weeks. Overall, the first four weeks went very well. I wouldn’t say that I cruised, but everything went acceptably well, even the weather was decent overall, apart from a snow storm that gave us a foot or so the week before Christmas.
But one is only as happy as one’s last run, and here’s the latest: I got up this morning to run before work. All I can say is that I hope this is one-off, a reality check to not make any assumptions about how any run is going to go.
So what happened? Well, here’s my running log for today. It’s not usually quite so narrative driven. The reason for this is that it’s basically a cut and paste job from an email that I sent Sara, and I was being a bit more dramatic than usual:
6:30a: Tough run to river and JFK to Harvard [these are the names of bridges along the Charles River. Put lifts made from old insoles in shoes last night. My left knee really hurt basically up to Harv Sq. And then by the time you would usually be nicely warmed up, the left shin started to tighten. I stopped and walked a bit, stopped and rubbed it a bit, stopped and took the heel lifts out. Each time I restarted, or at least sometimes, the knee hurt again. Just fine while walking. Even without the lifts, the shin still surfaced as something that I could feel a few more times. Once when I lengthened my stride a little for about 50 yards. I realize both pain points were in same leg, and it might be related to the lifts? I am going to stay off hills for a while until calf lays off a bit, and I am going to hope and pray this shin/knee things was just an end of year glitch, and I am hoping to try to persuade myself to do a two-week ankle strengthening routine.
Well, that was the low point of my marathon training so far. The relay race I did without warming up sufficiently would be on the low point list too. I’d rank it below today. The relay was a few weeks ago so time might have diluted its memory as time does with so many things. Thank you, time, for obfuscating so many of my memories, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Would it be a curse or blessing to be able to recapture old places, setting, emotions? I must send an email to M. Proust on that one. Perhaps I could begin by saying, “My name, sir, is Madeleine, and I am trying to reconnect with some things from the past.”
I am getting back to this blog entry a day or two later, New Year’s Day, [Happy New Year!] it feels like things have taken a bit of a nose dive. I ran about 5 miles this afternoon and it was freezing cold with slippery snowy conditions underfoot. I should have worn the shoes I put the screws in, but wasn’t sure what to expect so didn’t. Today, once again, some troubles; the left shin felt like it was ready to tighten up at any moment. Any time that I sped up a little it was right there waiting, waiting ready to pounce. I walked a few times and stopped to stretch a couple of times. I am trying to figure out what happened. Top theories so far are the heel lifts I wore the other day or perhaps some wear and tear combined with the fairly severe and cold weather we are having. I think it might be time to hit the treadmill at the gym if I do run tomorrow, or alternatively take an extra day off. I hope this is just a temporary glitch. Will have a better idea by the time I get to the long run of 13 or 14 scheduled for the weekend.
In conclusion, a dispiriting end to ‘08 and beginning to ‘09. Hope for better things tomorrow. Thanks for reading. I will be writing lots more about the difficulties of winter training during the bleak period of the New England year. Bundle up!