Its been awhile since I haven’t written all week, but this week has been particularly brutal. I hit an all-time high for non-weekend miles though, pulling off over 36 miles up until today .. I skipped my speed run on Thursday again because of my knee and decided to get up over 8 miles in instead. I have 22 scheduled tomorrow, and 12 on Sunday, it should be the highest mileage week, topping in at about 70 miles. Thats about as high as I go!

I was explaining to my wife that my body keeps reminding me that its August. It seems every August i’m pretty beat up as far sore muscles, blisters, lack of sleep .. the signs that training is taking its toll. The good part though is that i’m just a few weeks away from starting a mini taper for the Lehigh Valley Health Network marathon on September 13th. My knee has settled down somewhat, and i started taking glucosamine chondroitin with hyaluronic acid to help repair the muscles and cartilage i’ve been losing in my knees. I’m not sure if its helped yet or not, but things aren’t as bad as they were.

A funny thing i’ve noticed though is that my body feels worse on days that I don’t run, then on days that I do run… its weird. I’ve noticed though that my speed and performance has dropped a bit after the knee pain kicked in, although I did pick up the pace on Wednesday and Thursday .. because I had to. On Tuesday, I ran my 10 miler almost 5 minutes slower than normal, which isn’t a good thing. My hope is to get into my normal pace tomorrow for the 22 miler.

Its supposed to be hot and humid this weekend, so I plan to get up and out early to avoid the heat, although I need to take advantage of getting the extra sleep, its the only way i’ll get out of this tired feeling I have all the time.