Day 59: I'll Never Walk Again!

Yay for my last day with walk times!!!! I feel like after today I am officially a runner, not a run-walker!! Today was a Run 12, Walk 5, Run 12. These split days have messed with me in the past, but I wasn't too worried, even though I was adding 4 minutes to my run today. What I was much more worried about was my left ankle holding up. It's super-sore, and I didn't give it as much attention yesterday as I should have. It especially hurts going up and down stairs, i.e., when it is extending out at an angle. Alas, I found out a week or so ago that I still have health insurance until the end of the month, so were it to break, I would go to the er and make Former Employer pay one more bill on my behalf.

It was also trash day, which meant two things. 1. I was up early enough to run this morning, while it was glorious out. 2. I had to run far, far away from my neighborhood, and I did, striking out on a whole new path. (Well, I ran through the post-apocalyptic neighborhood, then overlapped part of the path Husband and I took on our bikes last week. But, it was mostly new for running.) I decided to go out and back exactly the same way, instead of looping, so I could know where my finish line would be.

My ankle hurt bad, the entire run. Every step was painful, and I really directed most of my attention to keeping my ankle from shattering. Although I did get a bit of a stomach cramp, I breathed into it, and don't remember that lingering.

It's amazing to me how much the mind sets the body up for what it can do. 36 hours ago I set out to run 20 mins in 95 degree heat, and made it. This morning I set out to run 12 minutes in 77 degrees, and I checked the time 5 minutes in. I was already about to stop, physically. Granted my ankle was giving me a lot of grief, but really?!

When I got to the walk section, I walked about two and a half minutes and turned back - I got it timed out just about right so that my walk started and stopped at the same place! As I took off running back down the street, where there were no trees, something wet hit my head. Oh, lucky me, that had to be bird poop. I didn't want to reach up and touch it, because then it would also be on my hand, which of course was also holding electronics. Best to just let it fester up there like a barrette for now.

I couldn't stop thinking about the poop.

I wasn't checking the time all the way home, because I knew I should be within crawling distance of my house when I finished. And I was practically home now! As I was heading back through post-apocalypticaville, I was really hurting, and as there is never any traffic in this neighborhood, imagine my surprise when two cars arrived at the 4-way stop sign at the same time. The exact same time, which meant not only were they waiting to see what I was doing (or were they staring at the poop in my hair?), but they were debating which of them was going to go first. I stopped, cold, well back from the intersection, because the guy I would have to cross in front of was staring into the morning sun, and I thought it best to take a 10 second breather than burst in front of him. I may have been able to do the Douche, but I was afraid that running in place might aggravate my ankle.

Once the traffic jam cleared up, I headed up the block where I had one of my early defeats, on a split day like today (run 4, walk 5, run 4, walk 5). Right as I thought about the fact I was crossing the spot where I had quit before, and was headed uphill, one of my all time favorite songs came on the mp3. Well, there's no stopping me now. Although, it is worth mentioning that I was thinking about people dying from running when I quit at that spot, and, oh yeah, the song? "Dead Flowers." (The Poison version, I NEED the Gilby Clarke album on my mp3, though, because his version is my fave.)

As I made my way onto my block, I noted that had I run all 29 minutes, I should have covered 5K. Of course, I'm not there yet, but I'm getting closer, and hopefully will be soon. Ideally, I would be there in 11 days when my program wraps up, but I don't see it happening quite that soon.

I didn't make it quite all the way back to my house - I was on my street, though. When I sat down to enter my distances, I ran 1.63K (1.01m) the first 12 minutes, and 1.59K (.99m) the second 12 minutes. Pretty close, and the difference would have been so much closer if I hadn't had to wait for traffic! I also had quite an elevation profile today - it was a bunch of small hills, but it was up and down, up and down, all the way across the screen. I knew it was hilly, but I didn't realize just how much - go me!!

I most certainly had to ice my left ankle when I got in - both inside and outside of my ankle is sore, almost more on the outside. My right ankle is slightly tweaked, but barely noticeable. I put some It's All Good on them yesterday - that stuff is amazing!

Well, in two days I'll go for an inconceivable 24 minutes! I'm almost done (just 11 more days)! And in spite of having to re-do a significant amount of days, it seems like it has gone really quickly! (It has actually been 87 days since I started this absurdity!) I'm going to have to put pen to paper and start working on my own personal 5K-10K program in the next few days!

Weather: 72, Sunny, No Wind, 87% Humidity, Feels Like 77
Time: 8am; Run 12, Walk 5, Run 12
Distance: 3.68K (2.29m)
Elevation: +95.5/-97.2/net -1.6 ft
5K/10K: 40:23/1:25:22 (Day 54/55 and 59 were essentially the same - both being second only to Day 57)

Run Time: 24 mins
Distance: 3.22K (2m)
5K/10K: 38:37/1:21:37 (About 6th best for just run..out of about 22 times)

P.S. I didn't see any poop in my hair when I got home.