Ran the race yesterday after 8 days off. Lots of tape on the ankle and finished the race with a limp in the stride. Couldn't walk after the race. Iced 10mins on/10mins off from when I got home to when I went to bed (3hrs). I'm taking today off from school so I can ice the ankle all day (I went 2.5hrs [10min on/10min off] earlier until I noticed the skin was staying red throughout the whole 10 minutes off, probably not a good sign so I took a break from it... I think I'm going to do 10min ICE/10min off for 2 hours then 1 hour completely off. Also, on a side note I think running the last 500m or so with a limp hurt my right knee, because well it hurts. But it's so small in comparison to my ankle I'm not worried about it. It'll heal well before my ankle.

Anyway, I've lost hope for the season. I think I can get back to running by the end of next week but I'm going to be so far out of shape that any racing I do is going to be slow and relatively meaningless. If I can get one more PR before I leave high school then cool, if not whatever. When I do get back to training, it's the start of my college buildup plan. My summer starts early. I'm actually not too mad about taking the time off because now I can kickstart the buildup plan. Also, I don't have to take time off between spring and summer and I think this allows me to race the 6K in June which I previously decided not to.

I've been communicating with Nate Jenkins, the assistant coach at UMass-Lowell (where I'll be in the Fall) who works with distance runners. He gave me an outline of what I'm going to have to do to walk on to the team. It's a lot of work and I'm looking forward to it a lot, which is why I'm being so dilligent on icing the ankle.

In the summer I will follow the schedule; easy/easy, then easy/hard from Mon-Sat, then a 2:10 long run on Sunday however I feel, with a 400m-building-up finish at GP for my 2mi time trial at the end of the summer. I'll have to run around 10:00 for the 2 mile the week before classes start.

When I get back to running, I'll be doing a jog 3-5mi before school every day, and as for the weekend it's treated like summer, so double on Saturday and long run on Sunday. For the long run I'll start up at at least an hour and add on 10 mins each week until I hit 2:10, then I start including those GP finishes.

Nate calls for 70+mi each week. I'm looking to build up as high as possible, I'd like to hit 100. I'm going to start off somewhere between 50-70mi the first week then just keep adding on between 5-10mi each week, as much as a I can handle.

Also I'm going to be working more hours in the summer. I've also been thinking about switching jobs, there's more options when you switch from 17 to 18 and have a HS diploma and are available the whole week without school/practice obligations. I thought about working nights but I don't think that would work out when I have road races, or when I go to school and have to flip my sleeping cycle over again.. I don't see myself working much in college so I need to make a ton of money while I can (IE; this summer).

In additon to working hopefully 40+ hours a week I'll be running hopefully 85+miles per week. I guarantee I'll go through many instances of being worn out and tired but I'm going to enjoy every second of it. I'm a little weird in the way that I like being tired. It's probably because I know that if I'm worn out, it means I've used my body well. The first few years of school for me I was like everyone else in the first week of practice; hadn't run for weeks, you come back and blast 3 mile tempo runs and you can't walk because the muscles are so sore. Except I loved that feeling. Weird, right? Well, that's me. I enjoy knowing I've done a good job.

And that's the plan.