LONG Long Run This Week

This is it. This weekend is my longest long run ever before I taper for the Madison Marathon on May 25th. I'll be running 5 miles tomorrow, and then 20 miles on Sunday! Yes, that's what I said. 20 miles! That's just SICK! I'm actually looking forward to it though, because after that they are all much shorter until the day of the race.

Here's what's been going on since my last update...

First, on the personal front, my world is pretty much falling apart. I'm going through another re-org at work, which requires me to apply for and interview for my job if I want to try to get it back. That sucks. Bad. To top it off, I'm busier than ever at work, and of course I can't turn down any work or complain considering the environment around there right now. So, until I get a job I just have to bend over and take it.

Another personal thing I've been struggling with for a couple of months is right ear problems, and according to both my family physician and the ENT, the diagnosis is likely to be a disease called Meniere's Disease. Basically, I've had a sudden loss of about 60-70% of the hearing in my right ear (may or may not be permanent) accompanied by buzzing/ringing, dizziness, loss of balance, and sometimes even nausea and vomiting. It's not fun, and I've got more tests to endure (MRI, ENG, another hearing test) before I get any kind of official diagnosis. Of course, bad news leads to worse news sometimes, and he informed me that I need to cut caffeine out of my diet (I'm gonna miss my morning coffee, especially on the weekends), and reduce my salt intake to under 2000 mg per day. I told him I'm a runner and that I'm training for a marathon, which requires mucho electrolytes, but he didn't seem to care. So, time to figure out how I'm going to hydrate with something other than Gatorade Eudurance during the race. Water just doesn't cut it for me, and I've heard it can actually be dangerous to hydrate with too much water and no electrolytes.

Ok, enough of that personal stuff. I ran 25 miles last week, with an easy 2 mile recovery run on Monday, a 7 mile interval run on Wednesday that went GREAT, a 5 mile race on Saturday, and an 11 mile run on Sunday. All of them went great except for the 2 mile recovery run. I felt like I was 400 lbs. It was worse than any brick workout I've ever done, but I think it helped with the rest of the runs last week.

On Saturday, I ran in the Crazylegs Classic. My time was 54:36, which was slower than last year, but I have an excuse. My wife ran in her first Crazylegs race (her longest race ever), and I promised to stick with her the whole way. I felt great except for the run up the brutal Observatory Drive. I have no doubt that I could have broken 50:00 if I'd been running alone. If the weather had been warmer with less wind, I also could have easily run the additional 11 miles that day, but I opted to wait until Sunday, which was warmer and much calmer. That run actually went well too, so I'm getting hopeful about the marathon again.

We'll see how the 20 miler goes this weekend - with less Gatorade and more water.