PANIC CITY!

The official word of the day: PANIC!!
Bad (Again): three more weeks have flown by, since my last post on 7/15!
Worse (Again): TR is now only 20 days away!!!!!

Stats:
(07/13 – 07/19): Running 55 mi (all trails); Elliptical 60 min; Stepper 60 min; tmill “marching”: 45 min.
(07/20 – 07/26): Running 19 mi (trails); Stepr 120 min; Elliptical: 60, stationary bike: 30, tmill “marching” 60 min [Note: Injury on Tuesday, 7/22]
(07/27 – 08/02): Running 52.2 mi (street 10, tmill 12, trails 20.2); stepr 60, elliptical 60, stairmaster 30, tmill “marching” 30 min

Higher Peak: holding steady now at ~13,000 feet for the duration.

The good: the “accident” happened on 7/22, and not (say) on 8/12. One minute there I was, attempting to do a reasonable 8 miler on one of my usual trail routes at Rancho. Next minute: wham! However, instead of my normal “3-point” landing (knee, elbow and one other point of contact) I slipped and crashed, taking the brunt of the impact on my left side – my rib cage. It hurt quite a bit, but as I was at least 2 miles away from the car via the shortest route and since I was only about 1/3 of the way thru the run, I decided to hobble on and complete the originally planned run. Much as it hurt then I was afraid it would REALLY hurt next day (and I sure hate it when I’m right). I won’t bore you with details but suffice it to say I greatly exceeded the recommended dosage for Ibuprofen for over a week. Needless to say, the 2 scheduled long runs for Saturday/Sunday did not go off as planned. Instead of 12 mi on Saturday I did 2 hours of aerobic workout at the gym: [30 min ea on elliptical, stairmaster, stationary bike and treadmill] (the tmill was 30 min of uphill marching at a 14 min/mi pace). Sunday I plodded slowly through a 10 mile run in my neighborhood, instead of the 20 miles of trails I had planned. Major bummer.

However of now I’m quite a bit better (although my ribs are still sore I can run and have made good headway on catching up on training and should be able to finish up the schedule in decent form.) I have made a sincere effort to train for this and I hope that I will be in position to finish under my own power – and within the permitted time limits.

Good luck to us all!!!