MOMENT OF WEAKNESS

After Friday’s 10 miler I looked back in my log book and found that it’s been 14 weeks since my last double-digit run. I enjoyed it so much that I ran another 10 miles on Saturday, giving me 46 miles for the week. Should I be surprised that ball/big toe area of my right foot is sore today? The frustrating part is that it didn’t bother me at all yesterday. However, stay off my feet for 8 hours and all the sudden it hurts.

I was up at 5 anyway, so I got dressed to run. Eventually I made the wise decision to wait and see how things felt at lunch time. Well, it’s lunch time right now and I’m blogging rather than running, so it looks like a zero in the log book today. Hopefully it’s just a little tender and tomorrow morning I won’t even think about it.

I gotta give a shout out to NBC Chicago for live-streaming the Chicago Marathon. Not only that, but on the course they had Toni Reavis following the men, Joan Benoit following the women, and Ed Eyestone was in the studio. I thought the NBC staff also did a decent job of bringing up topics and asking questions and then letting Toni, Joan and Ed do their thing. They even managed to fill in with some special interest stories that didn’t seem to take away from the coverage. My one (minor) gripe is that kept flashing the World Record splits up on the screen even though it was pretty obvious that a new record wouldn’t be run.

So after my back-to-back 10 milers and watching the Chicago Marathon, but before my foot pain, I had a moment of weakness and I signed up for this weekend’s Whistlestop Half Marathon. My goals are very modest at best – I’d be shocked by a 1:40

Finally, congrats to Ryan Hall on his 5th place, 2:08:04 finish at Chicago. I know everyone thinks he should be running sub-2:05 every time he starts a marathon. But consider this, of the top-9 qualifying times for the Olympic Trials, Hall has 5 of them, including the 3 best times.

Quote of the Day;

“Regardless of what some people think about American distance running and it not being a big deal to be on top of that, I think it is. I’m going to go into the trials very low, very humble, and know that it’s going to take a war to get onto that team.” – Ryan Hall