Two weeks ago, while running a trail course, my knee started to hurt on steep downhill sections. It hurt just trying to walk down the hills. Strangly enough, it felt fine on flat or gradual downhills (walking or running). As such, knowing that I have a 50K trail race in 3 weeks, and that it is a challenging course, I had to really think about if I wanted to push my knees. Whenever I have such a decision like this, I think back to what my goals are for the year. This year my goal has been to run more and run healthy. If I hurt my knee bad while doing the 50K, then I would be laid up recovering. I know myself well enough to know that if I do that then, I will get off my diet and won't exercise at all (sad but true about me). As such, I think my best plan is skip the 50K and work on building up my knee for running steep downhills.
So what does that mean for my running plans for the year? Outside of the Foothills 50K Frenzy in October and the Goofy Challenge in January, I had no plans after the Silver City 50K. This gave me a chance to think about what I want to do for teh second half of the year for running. After some thought, I have decided that I want to build up my endurance so I can run further. Currently in all three marathons I have completed, I have walked form about mile 18 on (the last marathon I walked from mile 16 on). As you can tell my current PR is not very impressive for the marathon (5:35). I know I can beat this time if I can just run the entire way. So I found a marthon at the end of September (the Idaho Wine Run) and I have decided to try to beat 5 hours in that marathon. This does mean a shift in my training. Currently I have not been doing anything but putting in miles. Now I will have to do some workouts that will help me work on my pace and speed.
Even though my goal is to cut 35 minutes off my best Marathon time, I think it is completely doable. I will keep you posted.
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