How To: Treat a Blister To Keep You Running

Been meaning to post this for awhile. Finally I can! Hopefully this will help those of you who are blister prone or will be increasing your volume this fall for a marathon or anew distance PR.

There is nothing more annoying than a tiny little blister that chafes just in the right spot to prevent you from running. I still get blisters every now and then, and it's usually due to my sock not being on my foot properly. BUT! I don't let blisters stop me from running. This is my method for treating a blister to keep me running pain free.

Here are my supplies. Moleskin, athletic tape (not medical!), and scissors.


This (pictured below) is the culprit. Most of the dead skin is still on there (only a little bit of the raw flesh is exposed). I am going to leave the dead skin on there until it naturally falls off. The reason why you want to leave it is because if you cut it off or rip it off, you will either create sharp dead skin, which will cut into the raw flesh, or by ripping it it will tear off good skin, making the raw flesh section larger (increasing healing time). Leave the dead skin be!!! (I will explain how it comes off later)

But first! Is this (above^) the type of blister that you have? Has it already popped? Ripped? Is it like the top of a volcano about to burst? Is it deep under thick skin? My blister had already popped on its own. However, if you have a blister that is a pocket filled with fluid (like the top of a volcano) and is really painful to walk on and it doesn't die down on its own, it is a candidate for popping to relieve the pain. So to do this, sanitize a needle and pop it with a tiny tiny hole and drain it, then sanitize your foot. You want to relieve that pressure before you dress it and run on it. Keep the dead skin on!

SO! Cut a piece of moleskin that is 1/4" to 1/2" larger than the blister. Then slap the moleskin DIRECTLY onto the blister region.

Take the athletic tape (not medical! medical won't stay) and liberally cover up the moleskin, giving it up to an inch of overlap. I used two thick pieces here. I kinda massage the tape onto the skin a bit to make it adhere better.

And that is it for dressing! Now don't go sprinting for that 10K right away. Get your socks and shoes on and walk around for a good 10 mins to let the dressings stretch and adhere to your skin. Otherwise, it will fall off while running, and will create NEW blisters. Yuck!

Now for the dead skin issue. When you peel off the dressing, do it in the direction of the blister if its ripped. If the moleskin tears some of the dead skin off, that is fine, it will only take a little bit and its probably the dead skin that was ready to go anyways. Somehow the moleskin does this perfectly.

I will do this method for probably the next two weeks until a new layer of skin has formed over the raw flesh. In my case, I will be dressing it until my next race.

FYI, moleskin is really expensive, so buy it as a roll. Buying it as flat sheets is SUCH a ripoff and you get less!!!

Happy running!

Mount Defiance: Day #2 of Lake George

I was able to start day #2 up in Lake George off with not one, but two kayakers to escort me on a short .6 mile OWS in the cove where I was staying. Thanks to my sister and cousin!

My thing about open water swimming is that I like to swim in water where I CANNOT see the bottom. Or rather, ANYTHING other than the person in front of me whom I am drafting. Got it?

Lake George is a clear lake, especially in the morning, and even with two kayakers near me, I still get freaked out when I see a fish, or a GIGANTIC boulder underneath you.

But do you really want to know what freaks me out the most? When I hit a gigantic DEAD fish out in the middle of the lake. GAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!! hahahahahahaa! I came up and was all panicked with, "What was that! What was that!" My little almost 12 year old cousin was laughing with, "Haha! Haha! You hit a dead fish!"

Ok, I got a chuckle out of it after I realized what it was. But man! Talk about freakout! What are the chances that out of the ENTIRE lake that I hit the one dead fish in the cove!?!?!? I could actually smell it before I came near it. So gross! I even cut my finger on its fin. Blah!

So after the swim, I laced up the shoes and went for a run with my super runner aunt. I said I needed to do 9 miles and she responded with, "Oh! We can go up Mt. Defiance."

Special thanks to Jeff @ Dangle The Carrot for shooting me a great of definition of what "defiance" means:
intentionally contemptuous behavior or attitude. OR a hostile challenge.

Does this look like a "hostile challenge" to you?

Says the average pitch is 9.36% ....I'd say the max is ~16%. Get your climbing gear out!

So my aunt gets us to mile 4 and we start going up a pitch and she says, "By the way, this isn't the hill yet." WHAAAAT!!!! We get to the top of the pitch and she then says, "Here is the turn to head up." We make the turn and I see this wall in front of me. GULP!

I collected myself and we started the ascent. It went wall to short plateau to wall to short plateau and my breathing got heavier and heavier and my pace was crawling to that of a slug. Finally we come to a flat section and I can see a clearing. I am convinced that the end is right there. WRONG! I turn another corner and again look up to even STEEPER sections that are even LONGER. OH MAN GET THIS OVER WITH!!!

Now my brain has switched into full on Mt. Ventoux climbing mode. The SUCKAGE is at its greatest and the top will come and this hill climb will pay off dividends in two weeks @ Timberman.

Well, at least the rewarding view at the top was literally breathtaking! Hahaha! Get it? I was out of breath when I got to the top? Oh man....I will be here all week folks, try the duck!

View to the north into Vermont. This is the bottom of Lake Champlain.

That fort is Fort Ticonderoga. The Brits hauled two canon up to this view and shot artillery shells down upon the fort during the Revolutionary war. Can you imagine hauling canon up this road?!?!?

View to the south into Vermont. The very bottom of Lake Champlain is down there even further.

We took it easy on the way down so as to not get blisters on the feet. It took us 12:30 to run the 1 mile up, and 11 mins to run the 1 mile down. I can't risk blisters at this point. Gonna save em for two more weeks. We rounded out the run @ 10.2 miles for the morning, rounding out a solid weekend of training.

I then fell asleep in a hammock on the shore with the wind rocking me side to side. That was a great and well deserved nap!

Lake George Last Big Training Weekend Day #1

This past weekend marked the two week out mark from Ironman Timberman 70.3, so this meant I could throw the kitchen sink at myself and still have time to recover. I was up in Lake George, NY, which meant a perfect training playground to accomplish everything I needed to accomplish.

Overall, I accomplished more running and biking than anticipated, but fell flat on the swimming, which was fine because that was just icing on the cake anyways.

So on Saturday, the debate was to do 2 loops of a 24 mile course that was on the easier side, OR! do a 30 mile out, 30 mile back, 60 miler on some challenging terrain. What did I have to lose? I went with the 60 miler. When I told me uncle I was going to do that course, he did the eyebrows raise, "What are you nuts?" look. YEP! Here is the course:


And elevation:

Nothing that steep, but LOTs of looooooooong slogging climbs in the easiest gear just grinding it out

And power profile:

Notice the constant up and down? Thats the hillyness. I was either going up, or going down. Few flats.

So I did almost 60 miles in around 3:11:xx, for a mid 18mph average over some hilly terrain. The main road, Rt 22, was a 25 mile stretch without a single stop sign or stop light with a wide shoulder on both sides and perfect pavement. It was incredible!

I hit my wattage on the dot with a 192 average and my legs felt totally fried by the end. But! I threw on the running shoes regardless and headed out for a short brick.

I went 3.2 miles in 24:40 for a 7:44 pace. Mile Splits:
Mile 1: 8:06
Mile 2: 7:37
Mile 3: 7:21

So that run calmed my fears. I wasn't sure if last weekend was an anomaly-freakish-good-day or if I actually do run faster off of the bike. It really is that I run faster off of the bike. Phew! And the fact that my mile splits were getting down into the mid-low 7's after a MUCH more challenging 60 miler than the flatter 56 mile Timberman course has REALLY artificially boosted my ego and confidence. (aka I paced the bike perfectly)

Will report more on Sunday's efforts. Here is a poll for you: What do you think a run up a mountain called Mount Defiance would be like?

SUCCESS!....before the LAST big training weekend

I can't believe it but this is the last "throw the kitchen sink" at myself weekend. I can basically slaughter my legs as much as I want to this weekend because I will have 2 full weeks to recover. I am heading out for the third weekend in a row back up to the ADK, this time to Lake George for a ton of SBR. The plan is:

Saturday:

• Swim 1.15 miles (this is the triangle swim course in the cove on the lake)
• Bike 48 miles
• Run 6.2
• aka.....funky distance triathlon done @ HIM Intensity
  

Sunday:

• Swim 1.15 miles
• Run 6.2
• crawl underneath a rock
  

The point of Saturday is to do a test run of my HIM Pace across a swim bike and run, all done at shorter distances, but enough to make me hurt. Then the next two weeks will be drawing it down, but keeping the intensity up.

But before this happens, I need to tell about some success yesterday. Due to scheduling reasons, and the fact that my brain is runtarded, I went running midday.....87 degrees, 66% humidity @ 12:30PM. According to the heat index chart, it felt like 95 degrees, and it SUCKED!

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I carried a bottle of water with me and that helped, but just thinking and dwelling on the heat made it worse. So I learned that if I could get my mind to wander, that I would speed up a bit. Also, when the sun would hide behind a cloud, I felt stronger, but then when the sun came back out, it was like someone turned a heat lamp directly on me and I slowed. I held a 9:00 min pace exactly over 6 miles and it felt like a tempo run. It was brutal....

Then it was to the pool for successful swim #2 of the week. I did:
500 WU
2 x (4 x 25 EZ, 50 HARD)
2 x 100
6 x 200 (descending 1-3, 4-6)
3 x 100 CD, breathing to opposite side or bilateral
-----------
2500 total

This was a great solid swim and I am back to a 1:30 pace on the 200's. Confidence booster! Panic mode has calmed way down and I hope to get in 2 OWS this weekend, wetsuit free.

Won't have the interwebs this weekend, so have a good one and I will catch up with ya on Monday! Happy training!

Distance Dreamers

I keep forgetting about the NYC Marathon in November. Why? Cuz I am not scared of it? This *could* be a bad thing. (don't worry, it is really on the radar and I am getting the prescribed run mileage in, I am just not "mentally" there yet)

I guess the reason why I am not scared is because I have A) one more Half Ironman to do between now and then, so my brain is a bit preoccupied B) I have ran a 1:50:00 half Marathon after a super hilly 56 mile bike during a Half Ironman. That run has artificially inflated my ego and confidence C) I have signed up for a full Ironman next season, so thinking about the 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike kinda dwarfes the marathon that comes 3rd that day.

But this is BAD logic! I SHOULD be scared of the marathon. The longest I have ever ran was a 15.5 miler @ race pace on a freaking super hilly course. It hurt, but I had a feeling going any longer was only gonna hurt more. I think the marathon is gonna hit me when I do my first long run over 15.5 miles and I go, "Uh oh, I still have another 10.7 miles to go and my knees are giving me the middle finger." (I really am scared of 26.2 miles, I am just in denial, which is bliss!)

SO! To keep my brain in marathon mode, I have found a cool blogger, Abbi @ Higher Miles, who has started a first time marathoner's group called Distance Dreamers. We can all share our first time marathon experiences through this group! Every Wednesday she will report on our progress and will give us Q's to answer about our training. So check out her site and join if you are doing your first Marathon this year.

Here is the first installment of Q's:
What made you decide you wanted to run a long distance race?
That sense of accomplishment. Also, it was a huge incentive to put in more base mileage at speed to compliment triathlon, which is my main sport.
Why the full marathon or half as your distance of choice?
First the half marathon because that is the final leg of a Half Ironman triathlon. If I wasn't confident in nailing a stand alone half marathon, how was I going to nail it during the half Ironman? The full marathon is along the same lines. I don't need to nail this distance, but I want to experience it before I do another one after a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike. I guess the half and full marathons as stand alones are R&D?
Finally, why was this the year to go for it?
To be honest, I wanted to do a full marathon for the sake of doing a full marathon, so I randomly picked this year. Now that I am doing a full Ironman next year, doing the marathon this year works out perfectly, timing wise. Plus, doing the NYC Marathon in November is a great season ender and the place to end it where I started the season, in Central Park.

Tuesday FAIL. No success

What goes up, must come back down.

My up from this past weekend crashed, and it crashed HARD.

My run this morning was anything but great, in fact it was pretty "crappy.". So enough said about that! Attempted 9 miles (averaging a 9:15 pace.....yeesh it felt like I was running through molasses), got to exactly 6 miles and had to "stop." So enough said about that!

Went to the pool right after work. Things were going pretty well after hitting a couple 1:26's on a 100 interval. Then I ran out of gas and started to get the shakes. Yep! BONK!

I am going to write today off as a "blah" day.

Monday FAIL!...no, I mean success

If you aren't a facebook friend of mine, then you didn't read my morning rant. It's a good one:

The pool was closed this morning due to a fire (is that ironic?). So I had the option of using the small pool, which is 20 yards (looks shorter...) and there is an old guy in there in a man-thong swimming. No thanks! So I go home mumbling curse words under my breath and check the mail.

What is in the mail? JURY SUMMONS!

The welcome message is like a big "F-U!" and they know it.

Dear Juror, You have been selected to serve as a juror in _____ County. It is our distinct pleasure to welcome you to service and we hope you will find the experience greatly satisfying and richly rewarding.

YOU. HAVE. GOT. TO. BE. KIDDING. ME.


Well things turned around by mid morning when I learned that I can postpone the jury duty to a date of my convenience! Good! Cuz if I was there longer than 2 weeks, bye bye well deserved Disney Vacation! Gonna try for a time after the NYC Marathon.

Things looked even better at lunch when I was able to get away for a 16.5 miler on the bike. This was supposed to be a recovery ride, so I took it easy, and still held an 18mph average. SCORE!
Now my 9 mile run tomorrow AM will be the teller of how well I am "recovered".

Success continued into the evening when they reopened the pool. I have been struggling with getting in the swimming since Rhode Island 3 weeks ago. I have no idea, I just have not been able to go! You know when you have been so inconsistent with something and then you realize how much time you have left until the big event and then PANIC! starts to set in? That was me this morning.

I had a "solid" swim tonight and put up some numbers that calmed my fears. I wasn't blazing fast like I was leading up to Rhode Island, but my times are way faster than this time last year. Phew!

I did:
500 WU
5 x 100, went 1:30 or less for each
6 x 200, alternating between slow and fast. The fast all came out @ 3:00 flat for a 1:30 pace.
3 x 100 CD

This swim basically saved the season (mentally)!.....if I can say that. I was FREAKING OUT! that I was losing my swim before my A++++++ race of the season, Timberman.

The ENTIRE point of this season (and I have to constantly remind myself this) is to seek revenge on Timberman.

I have the bike down.

I have the run down.

The swim is coming back.

And the taper tantrums have started!!!!!

.....just bear with me these last 2.5 weeks, ok? :)