As I was wrapping up the Around the Bay race a week and a half ago, one of the thoughts my mind drifted to in the last 5 km or so was the list of things that I do now that I never thought I would do before I started running.  It came back to me this morning as I was preparing for my 8 km run, and I tried something I have never done before.

Putting duct tape on my foot to avoid blisters.

Honestly, it seems like a pretty weird thing to do.  Yes, I have had good results with BodyGlide in the past.  It’s more of an experiment, really.  I don’t see why it wouldn’t work though.

When I ran in Hamilton, I forgot to grease up my foot, and it rewarded me with a monster blister that took a week to heal.  It could be a bad fit, improper lacing or something beyond my control.  What is important is that I have a 32 km run coming up this weekend and I don’t want a repeat performance.  So I’m going to try this duct tape thing this week and see how it goes.

This week’s long run was shorter than the race last week at 22.5 km, but it seemed harder because I was running alone. I ran the half marathon course again this week, and it was nice to do it without snow blocking the way. Just four weeks to go until the marathon.

One of the blisters I got from Sunday was really painful yesterday afternoon.  I hadn’t really done anything to treat it, and that seems to have been a mistake.  I cleaned my foot, put some antibiotic ointment and gauze on it and hoped for the best.  

It was feeling better this morning, so I went for a 15 km run, and everything went just fine.  Still cold though. :(

I felt recovered enough from Sunday’s race to run my usual 8K easy run today.  The only problem I have is blisters on my feet. 

It’s still cold, and I want spring to hurry up and get warm already.  The temperature was -6C when I left this morning. 

The race today was awesome.  It was cold, but the sun was shining, and there were thousands of people running with me.  The pack never really seemed to thin out the way I have experienced in other races.  It’s amazing to think that I ran the entire 30 km distance at a faster pace than my first 5K last June.   Going into the run, my target pace was 6:00/km.  I realized about 5 km in that there was no way I was going to hold myself back, so I just hoped that the hills in the back half weren’t as bad as I feared.  They weren’t, although there were a couple of doozies. I ran the last 200 m or so close to 4:00/km, and my heart rate was apparently 212 bpm!

What I gained: Experience running farther than I ever have before.  Blisters on both my feet.  Chafing in areas that I’d rather not talk about.  A new heart rate zone.

What I lost: My fear of running this far.  About 2100 calories. A toenail.  

The best part: A “pat on the back” from my son at the end.

My chip and bib for the Around the Bay Road Race in Hamilton.  

I ran inside again today, because there was still plenty of snow on the sidewalks this morning.  My knee was a bit sore from the hard running yesterday, but it was good enough for an easy 8 km run, and I don’t have another run planned before Sunday.  I may do 2-3 km on Saturday if all is well. 

Last night, a funny thing happened.  I completely threw the rules of logic out the window and ignored Occam’s razor.  Simply put, the meaning is “the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one”.

The initial problem as presented was that the light in our house’s upstairs hallway would not turn on.  An additional symptom is that the lower light switch was loose.  Knowing that our children have a fondness for flicking the switch up and down, my assumption was that it had been flicked one too many times and the switch no longer worked.  A non-working switch means a non-working light, right?

So I went to the hardware store and bought some light switches.  I figured I might as well replace the upper one at the same time.  Introducing complexity to the problem was probably not a good idea.  Anyways, I turned off the power, replaced the switches, and turned the power back on.  The light did not work.  So I figured that I had wired them wrong.  I turned off the power again, and rewired the switches.  In the process, I broke a couple of the wires so I needed to cut and strip them, taking even more valuable time.  I put the switches back in the wall, turned the power on.  Nothing.

The next thing I did was check the light bulb.

This is actually pretty clever!

So what if it snowed last night?  I took the run indoors!  Each lap is 250 m.  I ran 5 km easy, then 6 km tempo (although, looking at the numbers, it seems I accidentally came up one lap short), and finished with another easy 4 km.  Since I was running indoors, I knocked it up a notch in the middle section and ran the last km at a 4:11/km pace.  Why yes, I did push my heart rate up to 205 bpm.

Running inside at the track is nice on a day like this.  One of the funniest things is when I’m running, see runners come in, do their run and leave, and I’m still running.