Half marathon obsessing.

As promised, I've been obsessing about Sunday's weather.  Every time I log on to my computer, my fingers seem to automatically start typing:   w-e-a-t-h-e-r-.-c-o-m. Go figure.

The forecast looked just perfect earlier this week and now, a little less so:

Not terrible. While I'd prefer to see 0% chance of rain I'm holding on to the fact that right now there is a 70% chance that it will not rain on Sunday.

No rain for Sunday. No rain for Sunday. No rain for Sunday.


I've also been obsessing about my feet and on that topic I've got good news and no news.

First, the good news: No more blisters! That's, I guess, what happens when you don't run for days. Huh. No running = no blisters. Amazing.

And now, the no news: Nothing new on the toe! Well, that's not completely true. It is no longer hurting all of the time. So, that's good. Very good, in fact. Tonight, I will try it out on a 4 mile run and hope that it is miraculously healed and ready to carry me through 13.1 fast miles on Sunday.

No pain in the toe. No pain in the toe. No pain in the toe.


Airborne, vitamin C, vitamin D and lots of water are my friends this week. Germy kids and public spaces are not.

No illness for Sunday. No illness for Sunday. No illness for Sunday. 


Yes, it is half marathon obsession time.

Three more sleeps!

~ Felice

Busted by Thomas the Tank Engine.

It must be race week, because I'm full of nerves and worries about setbacks.

My latest? Well, on top of the blisters, I now have a busted-up toe. Here's how it happened:

My 4-year-old loves Thomas the Tank Engine. And he loves to read books about Thomas, especially before bed. So, last Thursday he wanted to read this one:

It's a large hardcover. Conal was fooling around on the edge of his bed, holding the book in his hand, telling me he wanted me to read it. I was sitting nicely on the seat next to his bed. My foot was planted flat on the floor.

He dropped the book. And the bottom edge landed square on the joint of my right big toe:

If you've been with me for a while, you'll know that that particular joint of that particular toe is trouble. I have a bunion (as you can see in the pic) and arthritis in the joint (from the bunion, according to the foot doc) leading to limited mobility in that toe. Add in the minor plantar fasciitis that I have in that foot and my running health is a very delicate balance. 

One little thing and that balance can be thrown off so completely and then it's all doomsday, all the time.

Which is what is going on right now. 

I didn't run for 3 days after Thomas the Tank Engine busted my toe. On Sunday, I had to try it out for what was a planned 7-miler. I ran 7.72 miles at a 9 min/mile pace and the toe hurt the whole time. I was able to more-or-less ignore the pain and tell myself that it was really too bad that someone's foot was hurting -- good thing it wasn't mine!

Post-run? Pain. I iced and elevated. Monday, I iced. Today, I'll ice. I wish I could elevate but with two kids that's not easy. It's hard enough to work in the icing time.

Please, please, please let this toe heal before Sunday! 

My plan right now is to test it out on Thursday, after the toe has had a good bit of time to heal. Then, we'll see. I have no plans to sit out the race, because I've run through pain before and I know I can do it. So, I will just have to see how much pain I'll have to run through this time.

Until then, I'll worry. And ice. And try to distract myself by obsessively checking Sunday's weather.

Have you ever had a bad injury right before a race only to run well on race day? 

Let me know -- I need some confidence boosting!

Thanks for stopping by!

~ Felice

Oh, blister!

Confession time: Whenever some otherwise tough major league ball player would be sidelined by a blister, I would scoff. So-and-so has a blister on the index finger of his pitching hand and will miss his next start. Yeah, that would be me, scoffing. What a wimp! Missing a start because of a little blister???

I take it all back.

And then some.

Blisters. Man, they suck. And I had no idea how much until now.

Sure, I've had a blister here and there over the years. But never, ever, ever have I had any blisters that have come even remotely close to being as painful as the one that is only slowly healing on my poor second toe on my right foot.

Holy cow.

Who knew a blister could hurt so much? OK, maybe a lot of people knew but I sure didn't. But, wow, yikes. It's a lot of pain. At this point in my half-marathon training, the last thing I need is an injury. The highly annoying blister forced me to take two days off. It caused me to alter my normal walking gait. And it is threatening to drive me crazy for real.

The blister surrounds the nail on my second toe. Yes, it is slowly getting better but that is only after a week of pain. I've tried everything that I can think of -- and that I was able to read about on Dr. Google -- and this thing is just hanging on and on.

On Monday, I was cursing it like nobody's business, wishing it was practical to cut the whole toe off because it was so painful. I couldn't run and felt like I could hardly walk. Unfortunately, I know that I changed the way I walked on Monday and Tuesday so my stupid blister ended up causing some secondary knee pain. Great. 


Yesterday, I tried it out on a short run and it felt OK but after the run the blister was huge.

Sigh. I really hope I'm not battling the blister for the whole fall. And I really, really, really hope it doesn't interfere with my half marathon.

Do you have any tried-and-true tips for dealing with blisters? 


Thanks in advance.

And now I'll leave you with this article about an inspiring runner: http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=23825

Have a great day! Hope your runs are blister-free.

~ Felice

Long Island long run.

We spent the weekend on Long Island, visiting family, celebrating both an engagement and a first birthday. It was a fun time and in the midst of the fun I squeezed in a run.

It's just two weeks (less now!) until race day so I had 10 miles on my schedule for Sunday. I got up early-ish (not a problem with early-waking kids) and headed out to just run. I knew I was going to run to the state park near my mother-in-law's house but, other than that, I wasn't sure where I'd end up.

It was about a mile to the park and then I hit the trails:

One of the trails I ran on in Hempstead Lake State Park
(I'm still a little shaky with the camera when I run!).

The park was deserted, except for a dog-walker here and there. I ran about 4 miles in the park and then looped out to run through the streets. Since I hadn't mapped out a good route, I ran where it seemed like a good idea but ended up not too far from my mother-in-law's house right around 7.5 miles into the run. For whatever reason I didn't want to run back over streets that I had already run on, so I made my way to the middle school and ran on the track for 1.5 miles and then ran back to the house.

All told, 10.5 miles at 9:31 pace. The run felt easy, which I attribute to both my comfortable pace and the perfect running weather that morning. My fingers are crossed for such weather on race day!

Now I'm having that weird feeling that comes with finishing your last long run of a training cycle. I'm almost positive that I am going to want to run 10 this weekend but I only have 7 on the schedule. That will have to do!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all had a good weekend!

~ Felice