wednesday weigh in / Last 20 Miles

     There really isn't much for me to say about the week other than I did really well with what and how much I ate.  So I am just going to skip right to the weigh in for the week.   

9/24/14 official weigh in

180 lbs

Change: -1 lbs

Total loss from heaviest: 137 lbs

Current BMI: 28.2 (overweight)

Change: -.1

     Today was a little bittersweet for me as I had my last 20 mile long run for my marathon training.  The weather was the absolute best I could ever ask for.  Clear blue skies, mid 50's for temps and little to no wind all morning so I think God was treating me for all my hard work I have put into my training.  

     Last night when I put together my route for today, I really wanted to challenge myself a little and get as much out of this run as I could.  I designed my route to give me as many hills and elevation changes as I could make.  I ended up hitting 4 highway overpasses and a few roads with some rolling hills.  The other thing I planned out was my nutrition and hydration plan.  The final map for the marathon came out yesterday and has the location of all the hydration stations listed on it.  I have been eating a Clif Shot Block and drinking water at 2 mile intervals.  The hydration stations are not at even intervals so I need some advice.  I spoke with my buddy Thomas who has a couple marathons under his belt and with his advice I decided to keep my nutrition plan the same, but I changed my hydration to match where the fluid stations will be during the race.  I also got a new piece of equipment that I now plan to use for the race.  I was hearing good things about the Flip Belt and it definitely lived up to it.  It is basically a infinity belt that you step into and slide on like a pair of pants.  It is made of a stretchy material that is sewn into a hollow tube with slits for you to slide all sorts of things into it.  Once you fill the belt with whatever you need to carry, you just flip the belt so the slits are now on the inside which keeps everything from falling out.  I had my phone, two packs of Clif Shot Blocks, two granola bars and a pack of gum.  Everything stayed right where I put it, I hardly noticed it the entire run and it was very easy to access what I needed once I got use to it.  Below is a picture I grabbed from their website to give you an idea of how it fits.  If you wanna check it out click here  Flipbelt.com 

     As far as the run goes, well just like the other two, it was long.  I think the first mile was a little suspect as far as what my pace shows, but I am sure it's right I was feeling pretty good at the begining.  As the run progressed I was feeling really good, and obviously my pace shows it.  I wanted to stay around 9:45-9:55 per mile, but as you can see from my pace chart I was actully sticking to the low 9:40s to high 9:30s.

     I ran into an issue at mile 12 with my right foot.  I was starting to climb one of the overpasses and I started getting pain in the ball of my foot.  It wasn't to bad but I had to slow down a little bit and eventually the pain went away until I hit the top of the next overpass on mile 14.  The pain was probably a 4 or 5 out of 10 and was right on the ball of my foot behind my big toe again.  I almost slowed to a walk, but I changed the way my foot was landing and kind of scrunched up my toes to take the pressure off the ball of the foot and that seemed to help.  Once I got back on level ground and got another couple miles, the pain seemed to be gone.  As I continued on for the last few miles, my pace slowly increased and I gave myself the my signature little push for the last mile. 

      As I write this my foot is still aching and slightly hurts when I walk around normal, which comes at a bad time because I have an event at work tomorrow and will mostly be on my feet working a 12 hour shift.  I plan on wearing my super cushy shoes to try and give my foot the best chance mend itself.  If I had to compare it to something I would say it feels like I pulled a muscle or something.