So, I have made a regimen to get myself ready for the 13.1-mile haul. My goals, in order of importance, for this Vegas race will be to 1) just finish... maybe with an at least slightly better time than I had for my first half marathon... 2) run the whole race, and 3) get a decent time. I'm not exactly aiming to win the race... but I am hoping to survive better than my first half marathon attempt (an experience which I have recounted on my donation page). At least I know what issues I am up against this time, which should help.
I made a training plan for myself from this week on out to race day. It is somewhat based off of Hal Higdon's intermediate half marathon training program, but it does have several adjustments based on life events scheduled between now and December 2... and some alterations based on my personal exercise preferences. Given that I have been running consistently for a couple of years now, I have incorporated some shorter speed work into the plan. It would be nice to actually get a little bit faster, but it is only goal priority #3.
Here is the whole schedule:
So you may be wondering about the meaning of some of my training terms, so I will explain.
Crosstrain: Some kind of cardiovascular exercise that is not running... in order to mix up the training routine and to help prevent injuries. Examples would be elliptical training, swimming, kickboxing, etc.
Fartlek: In addition to being a funny word to say, fartlek basically means "speed play" in Swedish. It is a type of workout that mixes continuous and interval training to stress both the aerobic and anaerobic (i.e. with and without oxygen) systems. I will basically do several shorter runs (on the order of 400 meters) that are a mixture of sprints and easy runs.
Kickboxing: Basically my preference for crosstraining. These are cardiovascular workouts that incorporate kicking and punching moves based off of the martial arts Muay Thai kickboxing and Karate, as well as some Western-style boxing. I go to a gym in St. Louis called The Boxing Gym.
Pace: These runs are supposed to be done at the pace at which I intend to run the half marathon... I guess somewhere around a 9-minute mile.
Tempo: This is a continuous run with a speed buildup in the middle. For this kind of run, I will start easy for the first 1/3, buildup to about a 10-K pace in the middle 1/3, and then return to an easy pace toward the end.
Strength: Maybe this is obvious, but I mean strength training... or weight bearing exercise. I probably will do some push-ups, free-weights, and maybe some additional weight machine work at the gym.
Training & Crohn's progress:
I am sad to say that the past couple of weeks have been frustrating... weaning off of the steroids didn't quite work, and I started to flare. I finally feel like I understand what a Crohn's "flare" is. Basically I started to have fevers early last week, without clear additional symptoms, but then had worsening GI issues later in the week. My interpretation of the flare is basically that the immune system starts getting overactive, but the damage resulting from that activity takes a few more days to develop. Needless to say, this hasn't made training easy. In addition, I have continued to have a bit of right knee pain. I am pretty convinced that my knee just has some irritation and inflammation, and nothing more serious (I had my husband perform a bit of a physical exam from our med school training... and he couldn't provoke any pain), but I don't want to overdo my workouts on a painful joint. So lately I have been mixing running and crosstraining... just doing what I can based on the degree of pain. I am still managing to workout 5-6 days/week, but I think I will only log about 20 miles of running for this week.
Getting back to the Crohn's flare issue though, my doctor has told me to go back up on the steroids (prednisone) to the previous dosage that was working for me (20 mg/day, which thankfully is still a relatively low therapeutic dose). As a bonus, the side benefit of the steroids will likely be some suppression of the inflammation in my knee joint as well. My GI doc has also added the antibiotics flagyl and ciprofloxacin, so I will probably do a post in the near future about the scientific evidence on the use of antibiotics for Crohn's therapy. These drugs are all on top of a background of Crohn's maintenance therapy with Humira + azathioprine. So, yes, if you were counting, I am currently taking five medications for the same illness. It seems pretty clear to me that the available therapies for Crohn's disease treatment are inadequate if a patient needs five different drugs simultaneously. Also, while I do need to take these medicines to alleviate the damage of my immune system on my intestines (and body... it's also important to remember that systemic inflammation is bad for your whole system), a couple of the drugs I am taking have dangerous side effects, and should not be used for long periods of time. Thus, we need more effective and specific medications to treat Crohn's... we need more research!
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