Return to Action

Jessica and I are running the Enchanted Forest Wine Run (Timothy Olson, this year's winner of The Western States, is the RD), which is a trail half-marathon in Grants Pass, Oregon on September 29th and marks our return to "racing." We haven't done anything significant since the Austin Marathon in February 2011. Yikes. The race has a ton of climbing (no wonder given the RD) and a 5hr time limit. I don't think we'll need all 5hrs, but we certainly won't be running our fastest times. Actually, it will be my fastest time, as I've never done an organized half-marathon.

The good thing, though, is that we live in a valley, and if you want to run trails, you don't have much of a choice but to run up. We've both been increasing the amount of climbing per run. All of the running we do now is on steep trails in the mountains. Yesterday, we ran up White Rabbit, which climbs a good 1,000ft in roughly 2mi. It's an insane workout. Jess continued down the other side to the park to get in about an hour and a half of running, and I double backed, running about half of the descent.

It seems that ever since moving to Ashland, my knee has gotten a lot better. It's nearly 100% now. I'm doing all of the right things--staying off pavement and on trails, cross-training, and stretching. I've also made a few biomechanical tweaks. My left knee turns out a bit and my right knee turns way in. To correct this, I've turned out my right foot, which has allowed me to more easily engage the glutes and keep my knee directly under my hip and over my ankle instead of collapsing inward.