10 K Run in MUTEKI

Aug. 30, 2019

5.1 K: 29:24.40

5.1 K: 26:12.36

Total 10.2 K: 55:36.76

It's been a while since I ran last. My last post is dated Aug. 19. I hadn't run for 11 days! Why? The reason is I had a serious pain in the ball of my right foot. There was a thick blister that had been bother me for months. And after the last running session, I finally decided to do something about it. I bought this over-the-counter medical tape from a local drugstore, and applied it on the blister. It's supposed to make the dead skin soft, and eventually come off. 

A few days after the application, a layer of dead skin did come off, and it appeared that the area was going to heal. But then under the removed dead skin appeared yet another layer of thick skin which looked like a mini callus. My heart sank in dismay. I put a small piece of medical tape on in, and a couple days were about to pass when the area suddenly started hurting. I removed the tape. Under it appeared an area which turned white because of some agent in the medial tape. It looked thicker than before. But it wasn't soft. It was, in fact, hard, and didn't appear to be easily peeled off. And it hurt! 

I panicked. If the pain remained, I wouldn't be able to train. If I couldn't train, I would be able to prepare for the race in mid September. 

I immediately stopped applying the medial tape, and left it at that while putting kinetic tape on it for protection. 

A whole day passed. The pain didn't completely go away, but it somewhat receded. I decided to go for a short slow jog in shoes. 

As soon as I hit the road, though, the pain that I had left while walking, seemed less distracting. I increase pace to find out a slight increase in pace didn't bother me so much. 

I continued to run at a comfortable pace, and since I didn't feel any major pain, I decided to run a negative split by injecting pace in the second half. 

 In the final K I increased cadence and put on a spurt. When I stopped my Ironman at the finish, I realized that I ran almost 3 minutes faster in the second half.

It's almost an hours now since I got home from the run. The pain that I didn't feel much while running probably because of adrenaline rush is back. It's amazing that now I must limp just to go to the kitchen from my room, and yet that while running pain was largely manageable. It's one of many wonders of mind-body!