Bloody nipples no more

Final results of the Baltimore half-marathon have been posted, and I finished in 90th place out of 1,369 runners. As I mentioned before, I'm very happy with how I did. I improved from last year by over 10 minutes.

When I got back to my car after the race, I noticed a couple of blood stains on the front of my shirt. Turns out my nipples had been rubbed raw during the run. I had been well aware of this problem beforehand and actually used petroleum jelly as a preventive measure. It didn't work. Earlier in the week I'd tried band-aids, but those fell off as soon as I began to sweat. Finally, a few days after the half-marathon, I found a viable solution -- waterproof band-aids. I had to shave some of my chest hair in order to get them to stick, but once they were on, they stayed on. I'm not sure how I'll ever get them off, but for now I'm content to leave them there. I haven't had bloody nipples since.

My next race will be the JFK 50-miler on November 19th. I plan to run it with my friend Brian, but he's currently nursing a hip flexor injury. With any luck it will be healed by race day. In the meantime, I'll continue training at 40 mpw with a long run of 12-14 miles.