Crystal Fog

The shin seems to be holding up. The shin support, affectionately known as the "shin thingy" seems to be helping out immensely. The right leg was diagnosed with the stress fracture earlier this year. It seemed OK until I had a couple of weeks above 25 miles in the books and then it started hurting again. I got a little aggressive with the ice and self massage and things seemed to get a little better. I even have some pain in the left leg as well. I am almost considering going back to the regular insoles from the orthotics to see what will happen. I've decided to stay the course for now, either through Memphis or after the doc appointment I have in a couple of weeks.

Monday I headed over to Bonelli after working out with the trainer. I ran the picnic loop 2x. Thanks to the changing seasons I finished up in the dark. While I am always happy for the cooler weather, the early onset of darkness is always a little bit of a bummer. I had forgotten to pack the shin thingy so I ran the 4 miles without it. Everything seemed OK.

Thursday was 3 miles on the equestrian trail. I wore the brace and used a 4:1 run:walk ratio.

The big run for the week was the 11 miler on Saturday with the CA Cruisers in Crystal Cove State Park. We met at the Sherman Library in Corona Del Mar. The run takes us over the Goldenrod footbridge to Ocean Blvd, then to Coast Highway and eventually onto the beach at the Crystal Cove State Beach. About 5 miles of the run is actually on the sand. We usually do this run in the summer months. Today the tide was higher than in the summer which left us very little hard pack sand to run on. The other big factor today was the fog. It was so thick you could barely see more than 100 yards ahead. The fog collected on my glasses making visibility even worse. I had to continually wipe them off to be able to navigate the beach. While tech shirts are good for keeping the body cool they are worthless for cleaning glasses. Besides the fog the temperature was just about perfect; not too warm while running and not too cool when standing still. The turn around point is the promontory at El Morro. The tradition is to touch "the wall" before turning around and heading back. There was an abundance of plover running around the surf and we got to glimpse a seal near the shore playing in the waves. The sand running kept the pace well over the 11:00 mark for the second weekend in a row.

Because of the shin pain, I've been trying to avoid hills. Running downhill aggravates the pain noticeably. This morning trying to decide where to run my 4 miler, I gave into temptation and ran an out and back route over in Bonelli on the trails. I kept the pace easy (I'm not sure at this point if I can really handle much of anything but an easy pace, but that's OK) and avoided the bigger hills on the back part of the loop.

This is the first week in the last three that I did all four planned runs. Next week I am taking another business trip so I think I will only get in three runs for the week. The weekend holds an 18 miler so giving the leg a little extra rest may be good.

With my run tomorrow morning before heading out to the airport I will finally break the 500 mile mark for the year. I hit 500 in March last year and in April in 2006. Ten weeks to Memphis.