My legs are precious! Does 10K run + 10K walk = 20K long run? :S

So after all that calcaneous injury nonsense, I have come to realize that my legs are precious and need to be taken care of very well before, during, and after my runs. Otherwise I will end up at the hospital.

I suppose every runner has their own ritual of non-running activities revolving around their long runs. See, people don't just window-shop a marathon. Eh hum let me say most people because I have heard of people entering a marathon cold turkey. That's 26.2 miles to run/walk/crawl/whatever you have to do to finish. That's when people's toe nails turn black and fall off. Lose hair in all the wrong places. Really bad stuff.

To put things in perspective, to do a full 26.2 miles which BTW is the rough equivalent of driving a car for 1/2 an hour at 60mph.

During my resting time I did tummy exercises, strength trained, balanced myself on stability pods, and rolled out my calves and a bunch of other cross-training cardio stuff like the eliptical machine and swimming. I even started massaging my own poor legs with special cream that's suppose to penetrate and soothe the muscles. At traffic lights I find myself doing calf raises, and if I'm sitting down toe raises and stretches. Someone had recommended an ice bath, but the thought of 0 degrees anywhere near you know what is a bit petrifying still. I'll have to work my way up to it, but I have found taking a cold shower (like the knob all the way to the right for maximum coldness) after the long run helping a lot. Normally I am a hot shower type of person. The coldness must be numbing the pain away. :)

So how am I doing? My July training schedule goes something like this:

7/14 7-9 miles
7/21 8-10 miles
7/28 9-11 miles
8/4 20 Mins Run
8/5 NYC Freakin Half Marathon! Starts at 7:00am but you must be in the corral by 6:15am! Nutz!

with Sunday 30-40 Mins recovery run, and Tuesday/Thursday 30-60 Min cardio workouts or cross-training.

I did 2 10Ks so far! And the good news is that I didn't die! And today I did my first "recovery run" back into my training and I feel good. I didn't believe in "recovery runs" at all a few months ago. The thought of after your long run like 7-9 miles and the next day you run another 3-4 miles easy is unfathomable to me. But I did it! Yesterday I did a 10K race with my sister. And today I did the lower loop twice - that's 3.4 miles. Booyah! So that's good progress.

I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but for one race on June 18th which was a 5M, for some reason she claims she beat me in the Father's Day race. If you read her blog entry and see the NYRR results:

Marsha's BS June 23rd Entry

WABC Father s Day Fight Against...
June 17, 2007 Kwong, Marsha F31 Jersey City,
NJ 5.0 54:03 10:48 4305 1323 544 44.8 %
WABC Father s Day Fight Against...
June 17, 2007 Kwong, Elaine F28 New York,
NY 5.0 54:04 10:48 4308 1326 418 44.7 %

she did beat me by one second! Watever!!!! I was waiting at the finish line to do what I think would be sibling victory dance with my sister, but the competitive dork she is she had to speed past me. Good thing she didn't collapse from her asthma!

So for the 7/14 Naples Park to Park race which is her first 10K ever, I had to kick her butt!

Naples-New York Park to Park
July 14, 2007 Kwong, Elaine F28 New York,
NY 6.2 1:13:01 10:57 4224 1755 728 44.6 %

Naples-New York Park to Park
July 14, 2007 Kwong, Marsha F31 Jersey City,
NJ 6.2 1:17:02 11:36 4471 1930 768 42.2 %

I beat her by practically 5 minutes and just under 200 runners! All jokes aside, I am proud that she finished! Good job Marsha! :P

Lastly I want to say the 10K on Saturday started and ended on 102nd St on the Eastside Dr. Here's an excerpt from my sister's blog, as I am too tired to write it in my own words, but question for you runners out there. Does 10K run + 10K walk = 20K long run? :S I was suppose to do 7-9 miles on Saturday but ended up running 10K then walking about another 10K to get home. Oh yea and I saw Stu and his family (Sammy and Benji are so cute!!!) as well as Ali in the park, so they are my first hand witnesses that I am running! :)

...So the ridiculous thing is that after the run, we decided to walk back to her apartment on the lower west side of the park. The finish line was all the way at the upper east side of the park. Somehow along the way we decide to walk around the resevoir for a change of scenery. We're walking and walking, and somehow ended up walking past the lower part of the resevoir and ended up walking right back up the east side again before we realized we were in the 70s again on the wrong side. So we turn around and walk down museum mile. We're STARVING at this point and go into the Met to eat in there.

Both of us have free admission due to our kick-ass companies we work for. So we walk around in there hunting for food, half wanting to look at the cool stuff inside, and half just need to stuff our faces with food. We evenually get food in the cafeteria in there. I eat too much, and even have a chocolate cupcake... the eating healthy thing has been really hard for me. I am so starving after a run I overindulge which is not good. I also have bad cravings for bad food for some reason.

Anyways, we leave there to walk off our lunch. We got a ways to walk and our feet and legs are REALLY starting to ache. We walk and walk, and it's neverending. I think by the time we get back to her apartment we had walked another 10k in distance between going down the length of the park (the lost and scenic route), and all the looping we did at the Met.