When it comes to a marathon, it is the training you do months before—rather than weeks before—that spells success. - Hal Hidgon

I'm entering my 10th week of training and I'm trying to convince myself that regardless what happens the next two weeks, I will finish my Half.



My training plan calls for 3 runs a week; 2 shorter ones and 1 long one.

This past week called for 5 miles, 5 miles and a 10k (it was a stepback week - meaning your mileage gets reduced instead of increased. given last weeks 8 miler, I should have run 9 miles not a 10k)

I decided to sit out one of my 5 mile distances to watch my ankle/calf, instead  did 60 mins on the elliptical. Thankfully my ankle, calf felt fine although there was still tenderness.

The next day I attempted my 5 miler so that I would have 2 days of rest again before my 10k. The run started off fine but afterward, I felt some hip pain.  It was pretty rough the first day..the pain is on the front but also deep into the joint. Since my description is oh so descriptive, how about some pictures?!

Mines more like this one..closer to the joint.. although truly, how do I know?! I'm no Dr!

Took another 2 days off..1 rest day, and 1 active rest day. I think I may know what the cause could be but I'm not 100% sure and will discuss further later on this week. The problem too is that I feel this pain when I go to sit, get up, walk, am sleeping, attempting to roll over..it's just a constant pain. I can't be completely immobile, so it's somewhat hard to rest.

Ran my 10k on the treadmill yesterday as we got hit with some crazy ass snow last week and I don't think my lower half could handle 6.2 miles of knee ups! So yeah..I started off with some hip pain and it never really progressed which is good, and ended with the same amount of pain as I started with. It's still there but I'm ok. I feel ok about it all. Lets see how next weeks 9 miler goes.



This leads me to an executive decision, I am foregoing my 2nd 'medium' run this week; these next 2 weeks, the non- long runs are 5 miles, and depending on how my hip feels post 9 miles, will decide what I'll do that following week but for this week, 1 day will be spent on the elliptical.

There is so much debate about whether you need to run 'junk' miles to be prepared for a race like a Half or Full that for now, in injury prevention 101 I'm deciding  that I'll be ok with 1 less 'junk' run as long as I do something else for that amount of time that involves my legs. Irregardless, I feel like I'm damned if I do either way.

Just last week, I felt such a high running those 8 mules, I truly believed right then and there I could have run a Half Marathon...now I'm just looking forward to post-race so that I can take a few weeks off.

I'm sorta down about all of it. I wanted to be feeling my best and unfortunately, that's not the case.

The good news is that right now, I don't feel any pain! Yay!! So, maybe, hopefully, things are beginning to pick up again!