December 19th. It's amazing what a little R&R can do. I took a week off from anything gym-related and all things exercise and now I feel great. My calf muscle is just peachy and my right foot is peaches and cream. I've had to be fitted with orthotics as my right leg is shorter than my left leg by 1cm and that's what's causing all kinds of issues. I also saw a specialist who advised me that my right foot is operating on some weird motion - too long to describe here. So now I have to wait until after Christmas to begin running again - only on the treadmill, though, and no heroics, I've been told. Just run to get my body back to the rhythm of running and I must finish feeling like I could run for another hour. So no overdoing it! I can do that part. And I've also committed to continuing my strength training on the exercises Siy has shown me when we were doing two weeks of nonrunning-related training. Those were no picnic either. I've promised myself not to overindulge and pig out over the festive season. I've promised myself that I will do my workouts as planned. I've committed to watching my caloric intake. Yeah, right - that's all going out the window when Auntie Elsie's Christmas cake shows up on Thursday!

The only easy day was yesterday.

December 2, 2008 Well, I finally screwed up this time, big time. My calf muscle was still not properly healed, but I attempted to run on it anyway last week. So 1/4 of the way into the run, it starts burning like bejeebers and I just couldn't run on it. So I told Siyabonga this and we babied it and limped through the whole training. I felt like such an idiot. My doctor booked me off running for a week to get this puppy fixed. And then my deltoid in my right foot started acting up and long story short - I felt like walking on my hands because it was so uncomfortable. I met Siyabonga at the gym last Friday - Nov 28 and he put me thru a nonrunning workout that made my legs scream and made the 8.5 kays seem like cake. But it was great. So we've decided to focus for the next week on waking up those dormant muscles that need to get me up those hills and just strengthen my overall program. I love it. The new training schedule will consist of Mondays running, Tuesdays yoga, Wednesdays strength training, Thursdays yoga, Fridays running. That starts in January '09. For the rest of this year it's strength training and hopefully some recreational running if the calf muscle is okay. So I'm resting and rehabbing the calf muscle and it's feeling pretty okay. I don't want this to become a nightmare and lay in wait for the day of the race.

The only easy day was yesterday.