What Training?

Distance:  2 miles
Time:  ?
Location:  Apple Valley to Sitting Bull

In a perfect world, I'd be training hard every day and feeling 100% ready for Saturday's 5K.  In reality, my ankle still hurts from rolling it on June 15, I went almost 2 weeks without a run, and I'm nowhere near ready for the 5K in three days.  Eight weeks ago I signed up for the Mojave Narrows 5K, figuring it would be plenty of time to prepare.  And for the next 6 weeks things were going great.  I was running fairly regularly and I could detect my progress.  Then a couple of setbacks landed in my lap.  The first was actually preventable -- it was just a failure on my part to make time to run as I became overwhelmed with work and a week's worth of busy days.  I finally got a couple of runs in and I was actually feeling pretty good when the disaster of June 15 struck.  I rolled my ankle pretty bad during a trail run up in Lake Arrowhead.  It put me out of commission for almost two weeks.  I would have been able to bounce back sooner, but only a few days later, on June 21, I was at the beach and my feet got so sunburned that I could hardly walk on them.  Over the next couple of days my ankle that was already injured and swollen from rolling it, puffed up like a balloon because of the sunburn!  I was couch-ridden for the next few days.  A lot of ice and rest and finally, today, June 27, I felt confident enough to go for a run.  It's been a mess of a training session these last couple of weeks, but there's no turning back.  I've set my mind to running on Saturday, and even if I'm crawling over the finish line, I'm going for it!

Tonight's run was simply a tester.  I wanted to run lightly on it just to see how much my ankle could take.  I ran 2 miles, to Sitting Bull and back.  And I was pretty happy with how it went.  My ankle definitely is not 100%... I'd say maybe 75-80%.  But it didn't hinder me too much.  In fact, I was able to run harder than I intended.  I didn't bring my watch because I simply wanted to take it easy and test my foot out.  Even though I was able to run on my ankle, my stamina was another story.  That may be the biggest challenge Saturday, just being able to endure the run.  My breathing was bad and after 2 miles I was officially done -- I'm not sure I could have done another.  I'm basically out of time to train, so I have to hope adrenaline kicks in Saturday, or it's gonna be a long race.  Hopefully I can get one more training run in tomorrow.  Then it's nothing but fingers crossed.