I’m now back on line in regard to blog postings. Sorry about that, but I couldn’t access the site that allowed me to post blogs and amend the web site. The Asia Pacific Digital staff helped solve the problem. Hopefully everything is fine from here on.

I was initially very sore after last weekend’s 100 km. I’m fine now, though there is some residual fatigue still in the quads. I ran a reasonable 5 km this morning, though I intend to take it easy for a little while yet.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it still amazes me that my Achilles attachment issue was caused not by overuse, but rather by underuse. Who has ever heard of such a problem?

Modern sports science is only just coming to the realization that tendons (or more correctly, the region where the tendon transitions into bone) require constant loading in order to keep them healthy. Just as bones require regular weight bearing stress to keep them strong and to prevent a loss of bone density, so too the tendon insertions require regular loading to keep them strong.

Running around the world resulted in my tendon insertions adapting to a certain level of stress. As strange as it seems, reducing this stress caused a weakening of the region, and the subsequent pain. It would appear I now may need to keep regularly running long distances to stay healthy. I feel like the bus in the movie Speed. I’m fine while I keep moving, but if I stop I explode.

I now intend to aim for a shorter race in a few months – one in which I can compare my performance to previous years. The big question is, will running around the world have affected me, either positively or negatively? More on this in subsequent blogs.

On This Day

May 8, 2012

There was no blog on this day, as I was taking a short break for visa reasons. I’d been in the US for three months, and we had to leave the North American continent entirely before returning to begin running again where I’d left off  in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

May 8, 2013

Distance today = 48.41 km; Total distance = 20,617.02 km; Location = Plovdiv, Bulgaria (8 km east of) – 42 08.798′ N, 24 51.555′ E; Start time = 0835, Finish time = 1710

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309673065

I knew I was below par before I started today, and it proved to be a bit of a struggle. I’m not sure why, but I awoke feeling tired and knowing it would be a tough one. The roads were very busy too, which made it even less enjoyable.

I was the Pied Piper of dogs again today, with a female King Charles Spaniel following me for about 15 km. She was clearly a stray, which is strange for a KCS, and she only had a basic road sense. I was constantly yelling at her to get off the road, as she would often start to cross in front of oncoming traffic. After not letting me out of her sight for so long, I eventually went into a petrol station to get a drink, and she wasn’t there when I came out. I was glad, as I was a nervous wreck by that time.

I could then relax a bit, which wasn’t easy with the amount of traffic. After lunch with the “support crew”, I ran into the large city of Plovdiv. I recall Plovdiv hosting the World Junior Athletics Championships a couple of decades ago. It’s a reasonably interesting place and is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was a Thracian city for centuries before being conquered by Phillip, the father of Alexander the Great. The city was also under Roman control for a long time.

I met Barry in the city, and he ran the last 9 km with me. The girls then came out and picked us up to commute back to the city for the night. The tracker shows me in Plovdiv, but my real position is about 8 km further east.