Training Log - July 14, 2008

Ironman Louisville training window - 717 days
Columbus Half Marathon training window - 97 days

Without trying to make this year’s training into a greek tragedy, I have to report the latest bump in my road to the Columbus marathon. I mentioned in my last post about losing steam towards the end of my walk. This has continued throughout the walks since. This caused me to visit my MD again to see what he thought. He ruled out the HBP med that he has me on since it does not work with the cardio-vascular system. He was left with either A: my heart rate and BP drop during exercise for some reason or B – due to my sparse training this year, I am experiencing de-conditioning. The only way to check on option A is to do a stress test (I am scheduled for one on 7/28) and monitor heart rate and BP on a treadmill. My hope is that this will come back OK and it is just option B.

Regardless of the outcome of this situation, I have come to the realization that the Columbus Marathon is no longer feasible for me. I sent an e-mail to the registration folks at the marathon and have asked that they switch my registration to the Half Marathon. With 14 weeks to go, I had fallen too far behind my training to catch up without running the risk of injury. My current mileage is in line with where I would be in a half marathon schedule.

I did 3 miles at Antrim Park on Sunday in 54:00 minutes and an average pace of 18 min/mile. The “loss of steam” hit at about 27 min but I decided to continue and hit the 3 miles. Not a pretty last mile. Split times were: 1) 17:40, 2) 17:10 and 3) 19:10.