My Team Is Falling Apart Already!

I'm once again getting addicted to this running thing. I spent most of today talking to one person or another about training or the Sawtooth Relay or injuries. I figure that's a good thing, but I also figure that my friends are going to get pretty tired of me if I don't knock it off.

I'm also at the stage that I get pretty angry at myself if I miss a scheduled run. See, I have to schedule them or I just go ahead and skip them if I'm tired or if I had a long day at work or the wind's blowing or the couch feels comfy or... Sooo, I skipped my scheduled run for Friday. It was supposed to be a seven-miler at 10.5 minute/mile pace - nice and slow. See, I had a headache that wouldn't go away from the long week of work and besides the wind was blowing. You know how easy it is to convince yourself to stay on the couch.

So I had to run on Saturday. I chose to run 3.5 miles up the Sunnyside hill, which is a big hill east of IF. It climbs about 1,400 feet over six miles to top out at about 6,200 feet. It was hard, although the run back down was actually harder, I think because I was running into the wind and going down made my feet and hips hurt. Not the knees though, which is good.

At about the turnaround point, I ran into one of my Sawtooth teammates who was driving down from his run at the top of the hill. He had run into one of the other team members on his drive up and had to drive him back down because his Achilles tendon was bothering him. Uh oh, one down. But one's easy to replace if need be.

Then, today at work, I talked to another of the team members and he told me he'd strained a quad playing soccer in the powerful wind we had Sunday. Ah crap, that's two. Then, a third runner told me he was exhausted from the 35-mile bike ride he did, also in the mighty wind on Sunday. I hope these guys aren't trying to train too hard too fast. I don't want to have a whole team on the injured reserve come June 14th.

So, it looks like I was the smart one who avoided exercising outdoors in that punishing wind on Sunday. I was scheduled for an easy two miles, but I knew that there would be nothing easy about running in that awful gale. Which meant that I'd skipped another run. Today, I made it a point to leave work a little early and hit the road with the intention of doing a little extra because I'd been "lazy". Well, that nasty wind was still blowing and the little extra became one of those runs where you go faster than you want just to get it over with. If I was looking to punish myself, I accomplished that goal. Should make tomorrow's run interesting - a four-mile tempo run at nine minute pace.