johnsjar

I have been considering my options since my last failed attempt at a 32 km training run. It was supposed to be my last long run before my taper. After that the taper was to be 23 km this Sunday, 17 km next Sunday, then the following Sunday is the 42.2 km marathon August 17th.

I definitely overdid it at karate in terms of knee/quad work and this did contribute to my failed attempt last Wednesday. But that isn’t the whole story. I am sure many factors resulted in my knees acting up and I can’t begin to list them all. I do know that my knees have been good for a couple of years now, and so has my arthritic big toe. Apart from my calf injury last fall it has been a good number of months, even years, of running.

The question now is, given that my marathon training plans are a shambles and irrecoverably doomed, what do I do about it?

I think I will try this coming Sunday to again do the missed 32 km run, even though it is supposed to be a taper. If nothing else it will tell me one of two things: Either I will succeed and it will thus be a confidence builder, or I will again have problems and maybe not finish the run. Either way, my response will be the same. I will rest up as much as possible, avoid karate, and just taper as much as I can. I will run the marathon.

It is better to at least show up and fail, than to not show up at all. I will not be “dumbing it down” to a half marathon because I don’t care about the finishers medal. I just want to finish.

So I will be running 32 km this Sunday, and 17 km the following Sunday. Talk about an exciting finish to a long and painful running year! But that’s not all! Stay tuned folks, because that is not my last race of the year. I plan on doing the half marathon in Devon October 13th. Apart from short little 5 km and maybe 10 km races, that’s all the major work I am doing this year.

I won’t be going to karate this Thursday because I feel awkward showing up and not giving it everything I’ve got. Instead, I will practice at home where I can avoid the temptation to use proper deep stances which put too much strain on already over-strained quads. I need to heal up my left knee because I developed muscle knots near the attachment points which I had to work out and I can’t risk aggravating the situation this close to my marathon.