Real David H.

When things are going well, I find there’s not much to say. So take my relative silence this month as a sign that things are going well. Here are some updates on how things are going:
* I feel that I’m on a good pace with my running and the distance I’m doing right now. This week’s long run was 6 miles. With the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half 8 weeks away, I’ll be at a good place at the end of August to have a couple of double-digit long runs before the race. I actually would like to be at about 8 miles right now, but that’s how last month’s illness impacted things.

* Since being sick, I’ve had three straight weeks of steady increases with my overall mileage — 13.6, 15.2 and 16.3.

* Somewhere along the way, cross training once again became unimportant. I changed that this week with a nice cross training day at the gym with 2 miles on an elliptical machine and 4 miles on the bike. Today I went to the gym since it was so hot and ran 2 miles and biked 3. I know how important cross training is — I just haven’t been doing much of it lately.

* I forgot to mention I bought new shoes a couple of weeks ago. After a year in the Brooks GTS 8 series, I switched back to Asics — the 2140 line. To put it simply, I can thank the shoes for helping turn things around lately. These shoes are great — they might be the most comfortable pair I’ve ever worn. That doesn’t mean I’m abandoning Brooks though — I’ll stick to Asics though for at least the next couple of pairs of shoes to get me through the end of the year.

* Remember that injury in which I went to the doctor? Remember how all this stuff was supposed to happen? PT, gait analysis, a shot? Well, none of that happened. After doing exercises and stretches I was instructed to do, all seemed to get a lot better. And after I cut back with running in May, everything felt a lot better. I wouldn’t say I’m 100 percent, but I’ve learned how to manage my problem. I stretch more; I wear my boot at night if my foot hurts; I do a lot of self massaging of my foot. The most important thing is my foot doesn’t hurt when I run.