September Update: Going the Wrong Direction

I'm guessing that most half marathon training plans have you going more miles as you get closer to the event, not less.  Unfortunately I ran into some Achilles issues early in September and had to take 8 days off.  Well, I should say that I chose to take 8 days off hoping that my Achilles pain would go away and I'd be good to complete my training and run the half marathon in November.  I did an 8 mile run on 9/7 and then didn't run again until I did 3.24 miles on 9/16.  Since I started running again I've slowly been building back up and I hope to run 8 - 9 miles this weekend.  Now that the calendar has turned to October I'm realizing how little time I actually have left to train.  

For the month I only ran 48.76 miles (compared to 60 miles in August) but I hope/expect the numbers in October to be closer to 70 miles.  I love that the weather has cooled off.  I now am running in 40 - 60 degree weather instead of 70 - 80 degree weather.  It is, however, harder to get up in the morning as it's still pretty dark at 6:30am but I just need to force myself to get up.  We also got a new treadmill a few weeks ago since our last one decided it wanted to try to tear our ACLs by randomly stopping.  I'm not talking about randomly turning off and coasting to a stop, I'm talking about slamyourfootonthebrakesandstoponadime stop.  I did 70 minutes on it last Saturday and I like it much better than our last one.  I do have to say that I think they are was some "gamesmanship" done at the treadmill dealer as it felt like I was running on a pillow at the store.  Don't get me wrong, I still love it but it just doesn't feel the same.

Oh, I guess I should mention that my Achilles does feel better.  It still starts out tight when I run and I notice it but it's not a sharp pain like it was before.  At this point I'm just going to have to play through the pain since I'm only 47 days from the race.  

Here's to healthy knees and feet, and to cooler (but not cold) weather!