The G Running Diary

Birthday Run: 1/12/03

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I think there may be a lot of ultrarunners who decide to run their age on their birthdays. There are not so many who invite other ultrarunners to do it for them. Tropical John has a long history of holding the Epiphany run for his Jan. 6th birthday. He usually runs too, but this year was injured and not well. This was the first time Don and I did this run. The options were to run the whole 52 miles, run the Popular But Wussy Metric Option (52 K) or run the Absurdly Feeble half deal (26 miles). We decided on the metric version, since it was only 9 days since we ran 100 miles. I probably shouldn't have been out there at all.

The group met up at Skyline Gate. You could start whenever you wanted really, but the common start time was 7:00 am. Some people did start later. The course was out and back to Lake Chabot Marina, which should have been familiar to me from Firetrails 50M and Skyline 50K. That was 26 miles, and then to get to 52K we had to go out and back as far as Redwood Road. I think we only really got confused on our way back, and even then it was for a minute. There was even some aid out there! That was great. Mostly we just needed water anyway. Some people were running the course fairly fast, including one Troy Limb who came bounding by yelling, "Hey Princess," to me, my latest nickname due to putting on a t-shirt saying, "I am a princess" after a race. Mostly, people were out there having a good time. A lot ran in pairs or groups and seemed to talk the whole way. Even the faster people were running at a comfortable conversation pace. I wished that my comfortable pace were that fast. I was feeling very slow. But that was fine. When we saw people we would either run along with them a bit to chat, or if they were coming the other way, we'd stop and talk. That was the fun part. When we finished, we didn't get to see anyone, just signed our names and times on a clipboard and headed for home.

The information I gathered from the run: my new Asics 2080s that I had high hopes for are dismal failures. Sure, they were fine running 30 minutes on streets. But out on the trails they didn't last long at all. I think my feet have changed over the past year. These shoes caused serious arch blisters, pain on the outside of both feet just above the pinkie toe (bunionettes), pain above the big toe on the right foot (bunion), and even with a softer tongue, cut into the top of my ankles. The tongue slips down. I tried two different lacings but couldn't get the right fit. I know a narrower shoe wouldn't work because the outside of my feet are against the edge of the shoe. Time to go back to shoe research.

The other bit of information: running with a hip/leg that feels bad won't make it feel any better. I have a pain from my groin to the inside of my knee. I think it's a body alignment issue and I still haven't made it over to my chiropractor to get it straightened out. My fear, of course, is that somehow I have a stress fracture in my femur. Stress fractures are the enemy.