What the Friday?

I set a new PR this month.  Not a running PR, but it was nearly as impressive. I set a PR for the number of welts (200+) my body could fit on my torso (with a small amount of spill over onto my legs).  This nasty weltfest lasted for nearly 4 weeks! The cause of this rash, called Pityriasis rosea (also a PR!), appears to be quite a medical mystery. The prevailing hypothesis calls it an immune system response to a viral infection of some sort since most people report having had some sort of horrible viral infection prior to its onset.

Immediately before the PR onset, I didn't have typical viral symptoms, but I did have a killer toothache. I mean, a jaw-throbbing, headache inducing, face numbing toothache. It lasted for about 10 days. I didn't suspect a virus because I actually do have a bad tooth that I need to pay a lot of money to have fixed. I did try to make an appointment with my dentist when the pain got pretty unbearable, but I never made it to the appointment because the toothache magically disappeared--just as my body started welting up.

My body looked hideous.  Just click on the link above and view some of the pictures. I was one of the lucky ones, however, in that my rash did not itch. Only 25% of those affected have no itching associated with the rash.

Since my body has been fighting its own internal battles over the past 6 weeks, it hasn't had a lot of interest in training hard. I have been training, but I haven't felt 100%.  I did my first 20 miler for my Twin Cities Marathon Prep a few weeks ago, but soon after that realized I needed to ditch that marathon plan and let my body tell me when it wanted to run hard again.

The PR went away a week or more ago, but I still don't feel perfect. I do feel like I'm getting there, though. Always eager to have a new goal, I started a 14-week marathon training program last week, targeting the California International Marathon as my goal race.  I hope this will be enough time to get over this health crisis and get in some good training.

CIM is a great race.  I've run it 5 times but not since 2008, where I had my best marathon experience ever though not my fastest time. In fact, the picture at the top of my blog was taken that day in 2008 at around mile 20, and, yes, I WAS that happy!

I've been thinking about what to do with this blog since I seem to be having a tough time motivating myself to keep it up.  I've decided to do weekly posts with updates on my training. To start things off, here's what I did last week!

Total miles: 63
M: 6 easy with hill plyometrics
T: 10 total with 2 miles of sprint training then 3 x 3,2,1 minute hill repeats @5k effort (equal jog rests) on treadmill (major mental focus required for this!)
W: 8 easy
Th: 8.5 w/10 increasing effort strides then 20 minutes at marathon effort (~6:30)
F: 6 easy with hill plyometrics
Sat: 8 easy
Sun: 16.5 including drills and plyometrics, then 30 minutes at 1/2 marathon effort (~6:25).  Tough day.