Gol-ding-it all to heck, and lots of other bad words!

For the past three weeks I have not missed ONE mid-week run. For the past two days I have been especially careful about my diet, and yesterday I cancelled all calorie restrictions and ate to appetite, but avoiding unhealthy pre-run foods, which turned out to be only 1600 calories, surprisingly. I went to bed only a little later than I meant to, got up on time (and had to wait around for the sun to come up -- I need to factor in the shrinking days, especially since I'm further south and west than the rest of you!), dressed just right, and ate a healthy pre-run breakfast of a banana and a piece of bread. So far so good.

I went out feeling pretty strong -- next time I need to eat breakfast before I get dressed, so it has time to settle -- and at 6 miles in I was feeling very good and switched from water to electrolytes and started adding in Shot Bloks every 15-20 minutes. All continued well, and my stamina NEVER ran out! No wall! Hooray! But... at around 14-15 miles my knee started protesting a little bit. By 15 3/4 miles, it was SCREAMING at me (figuratively speaking, of course). When I stopped for my walk, I found I couldn't run again. It was just too painful. I called Daniel and told him I had to wimp out, but I was going to walk home the direct route. By doing looonnngggg walk breaks I managed to run two or three times more over the last two miles or so, and I walked an extra couple of blocks to finish up at 18 miles instead of the 20 I was aiming for. My pace had been good -- cautiously slow but not sluggish -- and, as I said, I was nowhere near out of stamina. I honestly felt like I could have done the whole 26.2 today if I'd needed to. After sitting at home for a few minutes feeling annoyed, I went back out (with Daniel for company) and walked two miles more, so I've gone 20 miles today, but the final 4+ were at a snail's pace.

I guess the good news is that I have a pretty good idea what I need to do to get ready for the race, stamina-wise -- that is, I have a clue about how to eat and drink and pace myself when I run, and how to eat and sleep and such beforehand. I think I might want to try some gels after all for nutrition; I liked the Shot Bloks for the first hour of them, but then my teeth started getting sensitive, so it would be nice to have something that doesn't require chewing. But I've just heard such icky things about the gels.

But now I have NO clue what to do about my knee. Knee injuries aren't something you want to mess around with. I've been doing some online reading and it might be an iliotibial band injury, and for that I'm supposed to be using ice (check) and ibuprofen (check) and doing IT band stretches (no problem). They say over-pronation can cause it, but that's not my problem; however, a long stretch of today's run was on a road that had a lot of hills and some serious curves, which meant the road kept banking, so I was running lopsided a lot. And there was NO shoulder, and there were a lot of seams and potholes, so it's possible that road added just enough strain to do me in, especially given that I've had some minor knee pain of this sort over the last couple of weeks (not so much this week, but definitely last).

Well, phooey. I really wanted to post that I'd gone 20 miles and it had been a breeze and now I was happily tired. I am happily tired. And I did go 20 miles, and except for the knee it was a breeze. But my knee hurts and I couldn't RUN the 20, so I'm ticked. Phooey again.