Mad Dogs and Englishmen

... go out in the midday sun. I’m half English, so “Let’s GO!” A happy midday run on my favorite rock & gravel service road along the railroad tracks. 66 degrees and sunny, dry with a stiff south breeze. 8.1 miles in 1:07:30, for a pace of 8:20 in what was intended to be a recovery run from Saturday’s 20-miler. Faster than a recovery run, but I felt good throughout. Funny - after watching the Boston Marathon I felt like I was just shuffling along at an old man’s jogging pace, and was surprised to find that it was a little more sprightly than that, and on soft gravel besides. I’d be delighted to run my next marathon at this pace.
A slight initial pain in the left knee went away. A slight post-run pain in the right knee went away too. Cranky old knees, but there is arthritis in my family, so I’m lucky to have so little knee and hip trouble.

I have a training plan that looks ahead one or two marathons, covering a three to four month period. The current plan goes through Grandma’s Marathon. I can move things around on the schedule, but the per-week mileage goals and the long runs are always completed unless I’m injured. No exceptions. This week the 20-mile run was initially scheduled for Tuesday (tomorrow), but for various reasons it got moved to Sunday (yesterday). Then I moved it up one more day to Saturday so that I could run part of it with my running group. Saturday is the first day of my training week, and this week is entirely shifted around now but will still see 40 miles of running.

Myeloma:

I’m supposed to take thalidomide for eight more days, but I’ve decided to stop it after tonight, because: (1) The right-leg neuropathy seems to be getting worse (though I did not feel it today); (2) The rash on my back is definitely getting worse; (3) Thalidomide slows my heart rate and my race times; (4) I have a blood draw in a little over a week and would like to see what happens to some of the numbers if I’m off thalidomide for a week first; and finally (5) There is no evidence that the thalidomide is doing any good now anyway.