2009 Philadelphia Distance Run

I Ran the Philly Distance Run

When I ran the Philadel­phia Dis­tance Run last year, it was a tremen­dous relief just to be able to run at all. I’d spent the bet­ter part of a month suf­fer­ing from seri­ous ten­dini­tis in my right ankle and had­n’t even been able to run the week before the race. For­tu­nate­ly, the rest did me good and I was able to run. I fin­ished with 7:58 splits. I ran about half a minute faster than I expect­ed to run and felt great about it.

This year I haven’t had any of those set­backs, but I was still uncer­tain about my goals for this race. Should I take it easy and treat it as a prac­tice run? Should I push myself and try to hit the 7:15 pace I need to qual­i­fy for Boston in Novem­ber? I met up with Kris­ten ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing think­ing that I’d do the for­mer. My mind was made up, or so I thought. I did­n’t want to be dis­ap­point­ed if I tried to hit marathon pace and failed. This was a fail­safe. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Marathon Training Update

I haven’t been slack­ing with run­ning despite not writ­ing about it here very much. In fact, I’m off to what I believe to be a much bet­ter start than I was last year. This time last year I was bat­tling ten­donitis in my right ankle, an injury made worse by an inad­ver­tent kick in the shin dur­ing a beach soc­cer game in mid-August. I was hob­bled and had to take a week off after see­ing a doc­tor. A steady diet of pain med­ica­tion and stretch­ing got my back on track and I was chomp­ing at the bit for the Philadel­phia Dis­tance Run. Con­tin­ue read­ing →