LooseCrew-JeffO: Rock Canyon Half Marathon

LooseCrew-JeffO

Ramblings of an adventurous guy living in Denver and playing in the mountains.
For my trail adventures, visit my Trail Bum blog

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Rock Canyon Half Marathon

This was not on my schedule, but I wanted to do it.
My freind Jerry L. put me onto this, but I didn't see him there.

I drove down Friday night and found a quiet dirt road 10 miles from Pueblo to crawl into the back and sleep. I woke up after only three hours of sleep and then started thinking of stupid stressful stuff. It was hard to shut that out. I probably wasted two hours of sleep. Total sleep: 5hr. And I was SOOO sleepy when I went to bed!

I ate 4 pancakes at IHOP for bnreakfast.
Note to self: Stop at three, when you're about to run a fast, short race!

The park was easy to find. I didn't know anyone, but runners are runners, right? I felt at home.
It was cold before the start, but there was no wind and the sky was clear. I pulled the forecast up on my iPhone and it said the start temp would be 29 degrees, and the finish would be 45. Without any wind, and the sun on you, 45 feels almost perfect!
I ran in shorts and a sleeveless shirt.

I forgot my running shoes! Being paranoid, and a boyscout, I always keep a pair in the back of my car. They're Gore-Tex, and weren't necessary, but they were good enough for a half marathon.

This was my first race test of my new DryMax socks. Let me tell ya - THEY FAILED!!! My feet are MANGLED! I have the biggest, sorest blisters I've ever had in my LIFE! Good to find out at the end of the season with a little race, right? I'll stick with Injinji's+Wright socks for racing. I'll still use the DryMax socks for training.
In the photo, the extent of the blister is marked in red.

The blisters started just half way through. It felt kind of like sand or little gravel got in, but there wasn't any. That was just the skin separating.

I remembered to dose with Astelin and Albuterol, but I still had two asthma attacks. One was at 10 miles, and the other was just after the only real climb on the course. I had to slow, concentrate on form, and chill out.

Even though I didn't place well, I set another milestone! The Rim Rock Run was my first average-pace below 8min./mile. Well today I dropped the average pace to 7:45/mile. I know - the shorter the race the faster your pace SHOULD be, but mine hasn't been. It was like anything between 5K and 50K was the same pace, no matter how I tried. I've done two 10-mile races this year that were barely slower than 8 min./mile. So to do a half-marathon at 7:45 means I've finally broken through my plateau.

I need to push it down to 7 min./mile this winter!

I've got a few tweaks bothering me - all on the left side. Two on the knee and one on the heel. I didn't want to really take time off, but these blisters demand it. So I'll take an extended break - like two whole days! LOL!

5 Comments:

At 6:35 PM, Blogger Meghan said...

Dude, nice blister! Ouch, that totally sucks!

Hope you're doing well, aside from that gory-ness!

Meghan

 
At 8:22 PM, Blogger Drymax Sports said...

Hi Jeff,

My name is Bob with Drymax. I'm sorry to hear about your blister. I would like to find out what happened so that this doesn't happen again. With very few exceptions, we have had amazing success removing blisters as a worry for runners.

The few times we have had runners end up with blisters was due to the following issues: 1. Using shoes that they don't train with regularly. 2. Using lubricants that clog up the moisture management system. 3. Using fabric softener when laundering socks.

According to your post you were training with Drymax and this blister just cropped up during a race. Was there anything different from training vs this runnning event?

I would like to send you some Drymax Maximum Protection socks to try. We have had virtually no occurrence of blisters with any runners wearing this sock. This includes many ultra runners with distances well over 100 miles.

I was at the North Face 50 Miler today and we had multiple top runners competing and no issues with any blisters.

I am very sincere in my desire to figure out what variable went wrong so that we may restore your faith in Drymax.

I look forward to hearing from you so that we may resolve your blister issue and negative experience.

Thank you.

Bob
Drymax
bob@drymaxsports.com

 
At 9:35 PM, Blogger JeffO said...

Hi Bob!
I used a fabric softener sheet in my drier. It was the Target knock-off of bounce.
could that have been the culprit?

 
At 11:20 PM, Blogger Talon said...

Yowch! Kind of a fun half though isn't it? I ran it 1-2 weeks before running the Honolulu Marathon. Talk about weird transitions! We had worse conditions than you did. Glad you had decent weather. Very sorry about the blister though! Holy crap!

 
At 12:27 PM, Blogger Michael Quispe said...

Very cool blister! I never get cool blisters like that. Oh wait, I don't want them either.

Just run daintily along the path, like a ballerina, tip-toeing among the tulips. OK, sorry, I'm awake now.

 

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