Alive and TRAINING

I'm not even going to try to make excuses, I haven't blogged and we all know it.

However, in my blogging absence I've continued to keep up with training, despite life, and I'm doing well. I only have 10 days left till my marathon. Ten... seriously, where did the time go and how did it fly by so quickly? I've been counting months and I'm now down to DAYS.

Last night was our very last track practice (Yassos -- I'll explain later) and this Saturday is our final practice before the big day. We're only running 10 miles. That's right --- I said it --- ONLY. Ha! Honestly, at this point a ten mile run on a Saturday morning doesn't feel like that big of a deal anymore and I think that's amazing.

So what have you missed in my blogging absence? Well, this last month of training was NOT easy. My goal is to write multiple posts to catch you up. I'll start with my most recent and most stressful event - my first injury. Here we go:

Injury Part #1:

I went for a regular run a couple weeks ago, everything was going great and I felt really good. I ran for about 40 mins straight before finally taking a walk break. During the break I noticed a muscle in my left hip hurt. Then I felt it in my lower back and along the outside of my quad, from hip to knee. My first thought was OH NO, MY IT BAND IS INJURED. This is a typical injury for runners and from the sounds of it, is not pleasant and difficult to overcome. I thought I was in big trouble. I walked for a while before attempting to run again, but it didn't really help. I ran for maybe 10 more minutes and then cut my run short.

At first I thought I just had a tired, cramped up muscle, but my hip continued to hurt for the rest of the night and the next day. While at work I tried to find anything to massage it. At night the pain would get worse and walking up the stairs in my apartment was not fun. On top of this, I was in the middle of moving. Every night my boyfriend and I would pack stuff up and then take it to our new house. This meant lots of walking, lifting and going up and down those dang stairs. I told my coach and he suggested I take it easy. No track practice and no running for a few days. This was great for packing, but so stressful mentally. I'm training for a marathon and now I have to stop running? WHAT?

So I took a break for THREE whole days. My left hip felt fine. I went to group training that saturday and thank goodness it was a "step back" week. We were only doing 10. I ran the first five miles and by the end of it the pain was back but in my RIGHT hip. I don't know how or why, but the pain switched sides and stayed there for almost a week and it was worse than the first time around. I ended up walking about 4 more miles that Saturday which helped, but by the evening I was in pain again. I talked to my coach again and decided it was time to see a doctor. I wasn't about to take even MORE time off of training. Monday morning I called Dr. Smith (the same doctor who did our muscle imbalance tests) and got an appointment for that Wednesday. In the meantime I stayed away from running and headed to the gym for an elliptical, which is just not the same.

To be continued...