I haven’t posted in a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been training. I have been training and healing. In August I got injured from a 10 mile race in very hot and humid weather. Since then I was working with Dr. Pat, my chiropractor, to heal that injury. After 6 weeks I went to an orthopedic doctor to check things out. I started PT last week and I am doing well. The issue is a hamstring and IT band overuse injury. I had a steroid and ultrasound treatment last week, the day before a long run and I did really well. So well, that I did my 15 mile training run as scheduled and it was a decent run. The following day I didn’t have much pain and my overall recovery was pretty quick. I think I am back on track to the way I felt prior to the August race and will continue with a few weeks of PT to really help with the inflammation and my stretches.
As for my marathon training, I am up to 15 miles now. I have a 17 mile run scheduled for Oct 19 and I think I’ll be on track to continue with everything as I should. I enjoyed the 15 mile run when I took a new route. Those miles in the new location went by much faster than my same old roads. I am looking forward to mapping out my 17 mile route and will be sure to include many new places that I haven’t run before. During my 15 mile run I used the 3:00/1:00 walk/run ratio and that worked out well. After my injury I had been doing 2:00/1:00.
In the past few months I ran the New Haven Road Race 20K and the Gulf Beach Half Marathon. I finished New Haven with a time of 2:29 and I finished Gulf Beach with a time of 2:39. I wasn’t happy with those times, but I am thankful that I was able to run them and finish them considering the injuries I was suffering from. Someone once said that every race is going to be different. Circumstances will be different, the course, your body, the weather, so you have to accept each race and know that you aren’t going to get a PR with every one.
The Disney World Marathon is less than 100 days away! I am scared, but confident that I am successfully training. I also recall a friend in the RunDisney facebook said that your long runs are to teach your body how to run for that long and to go that far. So I am doing well with the long runs and I do believe that my body is learning how to endure the distance and the time. However, when at mile 11 or 12 of a 15 mile run, your mind does start to question why you are doing this and maybe doing the half marathon would be better than the full. However, like they say, 1% of the world’s population run a marathon, and I’d love to be part of that elite 1% and say I did it. I don’t plan on doing another (I don’t think). But I would like to continue doing half marathons.