My long running goal of properly training for a marathon will again not be realized this year, but I still feel good. And kind of crappy. If only the San Francisco Marathon were in a few more weeks instead of a few days!

At 950 miles of running plus all the walking I’ve done in the past two years, my Venada Rojas from Luna Sandals are showing some strap wear. That is objectively pretty good, though I know they could last a lot longer. I need to figure out how to avoid wearing the strap. Perhaps a wider back, or tighter?

I am slightly concerned my sandals are on the brink of death, so I may run the marathon with a small backpack and carry some spare sandals. I wrote to Luna Sandals hoping to get some advice and new straps, but apparently they don’t sell the stretchy leather anymore. Nor do they have anything in this lovely red color.

At 950 miles of running plus all the walking I’ve done in the past two years, my Venada Rojas from Luna Sandals are showing some strap wear. That is objectively pretty good, though I know they could last a lot longer. I need to figure out how to avoid wearing the strap. Perhaps a wider back, or tighter?

At 950 miles of running plus all the walking I’ve done in the past two years, my Venada Rojas from Luna Sandals are showing some strap wear. That is objectively pretty good, though I know they could last a lot longer. I need to figure out how to avoid wearing the strap. Perhaps a wider back, or tighter?

More concerning is the state of my body. In particular, my left knee and sometimes both have been somewhat stiff or tender after a few miles, starting about three weeks ago. I have been taking it easy, running very little, hoping it would not get worse. It hasn’t gotten worse, but it is still the same despite running less than I should. Then yesterday my feet were somewhat sore after 9 miles despite them not being sore much at all for months and through much longer runs. I can’t say I am injured, but was hoping to have no fear injury might happen if I persist. I’ve been sleeping more than I should, but also feeling like I possibly have a cold, off and on for weeks or months. Perhaps I have just had too much time to worry about it.

When I started training for this marathon at the end of May, I realized eight weeks would not be ideal, but I thought I could take advantage of some built up endurance. I was able to run more miles than ever in June without being too tired, but I guess endurance in general is not the same as endurance of particular joints. I’m thinking my knee has not had time to adjust, but I won’t know for sure till I manage to run a marathon with a proper ramp up. Looking at my history for the months before my last SF marathon and this one, I am now feeling even more pessimistic about it going well.

running-201602-201608.png

I have run less than half the already lower than planned miles before this coming race, and it was much more concentrated.

running-201702-201707.png

Until a couple of weeks ago, though, I was feeling pretty good about this coming race. I’ve also been excited to be making a lot of progress on my goal of running all of San Francisco’s streets, made much easier by the lifetime map function on the wonderful web app CityStrides.

This was my coverage of San Francisco 15 months ago:

citystrides_sf_map.png

I’m not sure what percent that was as reported by CityStrides, but now I am up to 21 percent (though I think I took this screenshot a few days ago at 19 or 20 percent).

citystrides_sf_map2017-07-11.png

My weight has also been lower than in a long time this year.

weight-history-201707.png

So we’ll see. I’ll still run the marathon, but try to take it easy. I also have the Burning Man 50K five weeks after this race. Weird year indeed!