FitOldDog Is Pleased To Achieve Ironman All World Athlete Status, But He Wishes He Was Running In The Boston Marathon Today With Jeff

Jeff, ultra-marathoner, who provides FitOldDog with great advice at Fleet Feet, is running (or has run) the Boston Marathon today. What a trip that is, so I hope he has a great time.

Interesting vignettes told by Jeff, at Fleet Feet, Carrboro, NC, USA, and paraphrased here by FitOldDog:

I don’t know if Jeff likes holly trees, but I do. Isn’t the world beautiful?

“I had a really bad case of plantar fasciitis one year, but I was entered in a 100-mile running race so I ran it anyway. It was hell for the first 60 miles, then the pain in my feet vanished, and it never came back.” [FitOldDog: How about that for a cure for plantar fasciitis?].

“I bought some new socks, tube socks, and used them for a long run, and to my surprise I developed a huge blister on one foot[FitOldDog: he showed me where, and it was huge]. Those socks felt as though they were crushing my feet after about 10 miles. I dumped the socks and the blisters never came back.” [FitOldDog: I had the problem of ‘foot crushing’ with tube socks, but it takes a while to set in, so I dumped them too].

Hi folks, welcome!

Everyone needs some encouragement, from time to time, so dish some out every day.

FitOldDog becomes an ‘Ironman All World Athlete,’ but I don’t feel like one, I just feel like a 70-year old guy putting one foot in front of the other.

I had an interesting letter from the Ironman Association the other day, saying that I had been awarded Ironman All World Athlete, Bronze Level, for being in the top 10% of my age-group, 70-74, in 2013, which was nice. Now, I’m not that fast, but I had a busy year in 2013, so I guess that was why this happened. It was quite a year, including 2 x DNFs (Los Cabos undertrained and Lake Placid on Paleo), 3rd in my age-group in Louisville Ironman, fortunately just missing a Kona roll down slot (that was close, could have killed me, really killed me). Qualified in the Raleigh Half Ironman for World’s Half Ironman Championships in Las Vegas, where I had a bike wreck and met a great guy, Bryan. Finished first in my age group at the Outer Banks Half Ironman (surprise, surprise, the second oldest person was 10 years younger than me, so I had that age-group spot to myself, just had to finish – great race, in fact).

To you this is a rock, but to me it’s a hamstring stretching device on my 3-mile run loop.

All this was topped off with a displaced abdominal aortic aneurysm stent graft, which was fixed in the Cleveland Clinic by my lovely surgeon, Tara (if you want to meet her, go to this link).

I must admit, I needed the encouragement of that Ironman letter, as I’ve had a tough couple of weeks, with two problems bugging me:

Firstly, Google couldn’t access my site due to a bunch of incomprehensible reasons listed by WebMaster Tools, so I had work to do. I spent a load of time wading through forums, all of which led me to my robots.txt file, which in WordPress is a virtual file – this is why I couldn’t find it in the GoDaddy file system (wasted about an hour on that one). Then I found a lot of advice on coding, which I ignored, as I was out of my depth.

This probably looks like a wet road to you, but it’s my listening post. I listen to my body as I run.

Then I discovered gold – a lady on the last forum I visited said, “Ignore those coding guys, here’s how to modify your robots.txt file in WordPress, dashboard > settings > profile > modify robots.txt file box.”

Problem solved (I said thank you!).

You might ask, “Why is he telling me this?”

I just thought you might like to know that there is more to maintaining a blog than “writing graffiti without punctuation.”

Secondly, I’ve been battling a tight calf, but I think I’m seeing the end of that road. Remember, you have to run a marathon in the Ironman, and if you end up walking you’re in trouble. Fixing this issue was critical, so I backed off on the other two events to fix this one – I think I’m nearly there – best run ever, today.

So, it’s been a frustrating but good week, and as far as I know my stent is still where Tara put it.

Have fun, and encourage people.

Cheers,

FitOldDog