This morning I went out to Mission Trails Park and did 90 minutes of mountain biking. It was my second time mountain biking in years and it was a total blast! My buddy Steven let me borrow his mountain bike and I definitly rode it hard. The trails out there are a mix of soft dirt and technical rocky/gravely sections.

STATS: So 90 minute ride, 12.5 miles, 1150′ of climbing. 2 close calls (almost-falls), 4.5 times I caught air (the .5 was a wheelie), 3 new firends made, 1 jerk met, 2 Gu Roctane’s consumed, 32 oz of liquid, 4 bunnies seen, 10+ times I bottomed-out the shocks, 2 hills I had to walk up, 28 songs on my ipod.

This is REALLY encouraging for my getting back to a normal training routine. My leg didn’t hurt at all! A month ago it pretty painful to mountain bike on flat soft trails. The terrain was much tougher on the legs today and I was STOKED it didn’t hurt.

My MRI went good yesterday… although I will say that the contrast Dye that they injected in my arm hurt like a bitch. The technician missed the vein 3 times before hitting the money spot. Something about the dye hurt… it may have been real think, I am not sure. I will say however, that part was unpleasant. I spent a total of about 20 minutes in the tube with ear plugs in. It was super early in the morning and I was tired. I actually fell asleep during the first test.

About 20 minutes after the test, my arm stopped hurting and I went back on with life as usual. Today Adam, our rep from Saucony, came by and gave is goodies. Mine came in the form on a pair of the Saucony Xodus trail shoe. This shoe is more of a traditional trail shoe than the hybrid type (Asics 2140 Trail, Adrenaline ASR, etc) with an aggressive tread and stiff upper. Cant wait to get out and try it.

Tomorrow morning I get to go over the results of the MRI with my Doctor. It is feling better, so hopefully it wont be too much longer before I get to start running.

The recovery continues! I meet with a specialist last week and we are going to do an MRI on Tuesday. We want to “see how bad the damage is”. It has been 4 weeks now since the injury and the amount of pain has definitly gone down. I can still feel sharp pain but it is less frequently. Typically the pain is the worst first thing in the morning and in the evening after work.

Today Jillian and I did pool running! I dressed to impress by wearing my speedo! I strapped on the buoy belt which keeps my at neutral buoyancy. Then you just run. It is like running at a track in that you are running in a circular pattern, but it is much slower. It was a lot more of workout than I expected. So we did 2 hrs of pool running and although the company was great, pool running is kindof boring. BUT, it is a workout I can do! So I will be doing more pool running in the future.

I will post my MRI experience on Tuesday!

Not a lot has been going on with my training the past 2.5 weeks because of my stress-fractured tibia. I am pleased to report however that yesterday was the first day my leg didn’t hurt! A sign of improvement!!!

I have a doctors appt on Thursday morning which may shed more light on when I will be back running again. I am kind of approaching the all-or-nothing point with my training for the PCT50. I need to be running by April 1, 2009 in order to do the race. I feel like I will be able to run in 2 weeks, but ya never know.

If I can run, I will carefully build up and run the PCT50. If I cannot run, I will continue to recover and shift gears to prepare for the June Lake Olympic Triathlon in July. There is a good possibility I will attempt another ultra later in the year.

As an update from my previous post, my leg still hurts. It hasn’t been getting any better. I still have sharp burning pain shooting through my legs and intense pain at the top of my tibia. It only hurts when I put weight on it though… so as long as I stay sitting or laying down we are good.

For training, I haven’t been doing much of anything. This morning I went to the pool ans swam for about 30 minutes… As soon as I feel like the pain is subsiding I will try cycling again. But until then you can find me on my couch… or at the pool.

Today was a particularly good day as I got a pair of Mizuno Wave Ascend 4 Trail shoes. I walked around in them today and they feel great. I cant wait to run in them. Very light.

I think I am going have my right leg checked out today. My right leg is hurting pretty bad. It is hurting around the top of my Tibia. Knees feel good and my left leg feels like a rock-star. I reduced mileage again last week. this week is our back-down week and the longest run is 9.2 miles. I am hoping that what I am feeling is nothing serious… the pain is a sharp, burning pain when I walk on it.

Yesterday, the pain was manageable with lots of acetaminophen and Stim Therapy.

So this week, I am going to do more swimming and cycling. We shall see.

UPDATE 3/3/09
Tried mountain biking today and it hurt pretty bad. Doesn’t look like mountain biking is going to be an option.

Today was a brutal lesson in hydration. We ran a 20-miler out on the PCT race course and I was not prepared for how hot it was. (83F) I started the day with 40oz of water and Nuun. In my pack for the run, I had 64 more ounces of water with 8 servings of Nuun in it.

The run started out going up… and it continued up some more, and then when you think it is going to start going down, it goes up more. It was almost 10 miles of up, 10 miles of down. The problem was I ran out of water/nuun at mile 13. This is a big problem, knowing I had to run 7 more miles, downhill albeit, in the heat.

Long story short, I was super dehydrated by the time I got done, to the point running was not really happening, it was more walking those last miles.

So I ran for 4:15:00, covered 20.07 miles, and climbed about 5200′. See the map/elevation profile below. This certainly wasn’t the way expected to run my first 20 miler.

Cheers & Beers!

Today I woke up early and met up with a friend from the Dirt Devils to run a new route provided by Toby. We started out in Rose Canyon and ran west. The trail met up with the Marion Bear Park Trails. So we then headed east and ran the entire Marion Bear Park. At the end, we turned around and headed in Genessee back to Rose Canyon.

The route was about 85% trails and 15% asphalt. The trails were in pretty good shape today, there was a few muddy spots and still several stream crossings… but that’s what makes the run interesting, right?!

The loop was a total of 9.25 miles, and took about 100 minutes to do. We were running a very casual, aerobic pace. Below is a cool new thing I found on the motionbased.com site. I upload all my runs there and they have a cool “viewport” feature. So if you want to geek out (Ryan) on the stats of the trail, you can use the map/elevation profile below.

Time for pancakes and eggs. See ya tomorrow.

My Friends running the snowy trails.

Today was bitchin! I went with the a few of the folks from the Dirt Devils & Bad Rats up to Cuyamaca to do some trail running at elevation.

The trail seemed like it was never-ending uphill. Miles 1-5.5 were rugged trail up about 1500′. It was tough! At mile 6 we hopped on the Pacific Crest Trail and went up to about 5500′ in elevation. Thanks to the recent storms in San Diego, by 4500′ in elevation we were running through SNOW!

The Pacific Crest trail winded around the mountains and when we hit the mile 13 aid station, we were done. We ran through mud, snow, and small streams. I felt like I was in my element.

The 13 miles took a painfully slow 2 hours and 56 minutes. Much slower than we hope to do for the PCT. In that time I put down 64 oz of liquid, 7 servings of Nuun, 2 Honey Stinger Gels, and a package of Sport Beans.

This run was my hardest to date but also the best. I got to feel what it is like to run at elevation and in poor conditions. The weather was about 39 degrees F at the start and within a mile I was shedding clothing. It was a big eye opener for what the PCT 50 is going to be like. So I will be doing several more training runs out here.

My body is finally catching up with me from all this running and it is not happy. Yesterday I ran about 5 miles and that was definitly all I could do. I the the pains arent anything serious… probably just pains from running lots of miles on road. Im gonna do some swimming and cycling today and tomorrow to keep the impact low before this weekend.

On the brighter side, Pair #3 and #4 of my Saucony Guides came in. Instead of numbering them, I am giving them all names. If I were a shoe, I would want a name, and not a number.

#1) Samantha (Saucony Guide 2, Pair #1)
#2) Hannah (Saucony Guide 2, Pair #2)
#3) Olivia (Saucony Guide, Pair #1)
#4) Erica (Saucony Guide, Pair #2)

So that is what is new with my training. I will post an update on Saturday after our trail run!