Are We There Yet?

Are we even close? How much longer? Questions I'm sure every parent has heard on more occasions than they can remember. Well, I'm starting to get that feeling. But in this case, it's not because I'm tired of the training or ready to be there, but because I'm just ready.

Last week's race brought a good scare to me as I've endured a very tender hip all week. Constant icing and ibuprofen has done not much more than mask the pain. All sorts of crazy thoughts going through my head this week about what could possibly be the problem. The worst being stress fracture and no running for several weeks. No way, this is not happening, or is it?

I took Monday off from running and then an easy 6 mile run on Tuesday to test it out. Pretty much discomfort the whole run and even more afterwards. Ugh. My stubbornness took me to the streets on Wednesday and Thursday for 10 mile runs on each day only to encounter more of the same. An early call Friday morning to my physical therapist was too late to get me in that day so I would have to wait until Monday morning. What to do in the meantime? Run, don't run, ice it, apply heat, cut it off? Well run it was so Friday and Saturday were easy runs of 6 miles each. Sunday I decided I would go forward with my planned long run and give it a shot.

It wasn't long into it and the discomfort kicked in pretty good in the hip/gluteus area on the left side. Not exactly sure why I continued other than I hate to quit so it was 20.5 miles at an overall 7:09 pace with miles 10-17 averaging 6:16. I was trying to hit goal marathon pace of about 6:20 but had a difficult time with the wind working against me, with me, and across me at times. By the time the run was over I couldn't decide if I was happy, hacked off or just indifferent about the whole run. After a little consideration, it was the later.

While I hit the goal miles pretty good and felt comfortable while running them, the wind and even more so, my hip were about to drive me to drinking........heavily. Why now, why does the wind blow and why was this hip acting up one month out from the biggest race of my life? The good thing was that I made it, I was still walking, albeit with a horrible pain and I was now pretty certain that it was a muscular injury and not a stress fracture.

Well, I didn't get an answer to the wind question and I really don't care since it's out of my control anyway, but this morning my PT gave me great news on the hip injury. Extreme tightness in my gluteus. The pain has been right at the top of my hip, but when he worked on it I could feel the tightness in my glute. After about 15 minutes of stretching and rubbing it out he gave me some stretching exercises to do multiple times a day. Key words.....foam roller. Let's just say my butt and my foam roller are about to get pretty acquainted with each other if they weren't already. He didn't seem the least bit concerned that we couldn't get this cleared up soon. To be on the safe side, I will most likely use him regularly through the remainder of my training to keep everything loose. Too much has gone into this to have something go wrong now.

Well back to the original question, are we there yet? No we're not, but very close. And with today's good news I'm starting to lick my chops. Two more weeks of hard training and then a two week taper and I should be ready to go for first of two big days.

This past weeks training was as follows:

2/15 - Rest
2/16 - 6 mile recovery run
2/17 - 10.2 mile medium long run
2/18 - 10 mile medium long run
2/19 - 6.2 mile recovery run
2/20 - 6 mile recovery run
2/21 - 20.49 mile long run

Total - 58.9 miles

Before checking out today, I want to thank those that have contributed to MCRC. The contributions as well as the moral support that I have received from friends is great. It certainly keeps me motivated to stay involved and make a difference in our community. I appreciate you guys! Also, I posted links to videos of both the Boston and Big Sur courses. Boston is a homemade You Tube video, but the Big Sur clip is a nicely narrated video. Really cool if you have any interest. Take care!