Well it finally happened, I feel like a truck hit me yesterday. Saturday was still very successful however. I finished the 50 mile run in just under 10 hours, but my feet and quads now feel like I thought they would for every day of the 1000 miles. They are sore and stiff and I walk the Frankenstien. What I learn from this is we got a little lucky. By going a little slower (11ish hours) for the 23 days and by ice bathing and eating right we were able to maintain the body. After I finished
with so much time to spare Tom said I needed to go out for another hour. Tom had a good 50 miler, but his calf did give him some problems and then Robert had it really tough with his knee tendon becoming very aggravated.
Yesterday started out great, it was 43 degrees and partly cloudy. It was good to see old friends and know that I only had one more day of running before I could take off for a long recovery from running. I may run an hour here or there after a week or so, but no long runs for a while. I think it will take some time to fully recover now. All last week the legs twitched and ached. At work I could not stay at the desk for more than a couple hours before I had to walk around. Then the shoes were putting too much compression on the feet so I had to walk around in my socks so it wasn’t so achy. Then it was difficult to sleep at night as my legs kept twitching and sending occasional sharp pain through the toes.
After the run Saturday every bone in the foot is hyper sensitized. This made the last 20 miles quite uncomfortable going down hills since the foot would cram itself into the end of the shoe. I survived because there was so much support for me out on the trail and I have had a lot of recent experience in running with pain. Sitting here on Sunday I get a shooting pain in my big toes just to let me know that I had run yesterday.
I would like to thank everyone for their encouragement during the run. It was fun to talk about my Ice Age odyssey. There were so many new people I met that would congratulate me. I missed many of your names, but hope to follow up in the future….so just come up and say Hi next time you see me. I’ll be one of the co-race directors and the Kettle 100 in 3 weeks. I am thankful I don’t need to run this one. Every time I got this encouragement I would get an additional boost to keep moving forward. The other nice thing about the IA50 is that it has two out and back sections. So each time you get to see all the runners ahead and behind you as you pass each other and get to say Hi.
I feel fortunate once again in that my body really did hold up for me one more time. I don’t think I will push it again…or at least for a while.
Another fun part of the weekend was hearing some more stories that Tom, Robert and other runners had about my run. I now need to get organized to save some of these stories.
I know blogs are typically daily, but I will try to give a quick update on this site on a weekly basis. Going to Old World Wisconsin now for the Mother’s Day Brunch with my Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother-in-law, Niece and Nephew. Time to gain back those 6 pounds I lost.
