It seems like I can’t catch a break these days. After a 9-year injury-free streak, the past three years have been very troublesome for me. In the beginning of 2015, I strained my hamstring which turned into a two-year ordeal with proximal hamstring tendinopathy. Then, after a good training cycle leading up to the Rehoboth Beach Marathon, I pulled my hip flexor on one of my first runs back, and spent the next few months nursing that back to health. Finally, just as I was rounding into decent shape and looking forward to running the Vermont City Marathon next weekend, my gallbladder decided to try to kill me and had to be forcibly removed from my body. This graph illustrating my monthly mileage over the last three years illustrates just how inconsistent my training has been.
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| Each red line is a setback. Wah. |
After undergoing emergency surgery on Monday, I was forced to withdraw from the Lilac 10K and the Vermont City Marathon this spring, and my summer racing schedule looks iffy as well. Right now my main concern is my streak of sub-one-hour races at the Utica Boilermaker, which currently stands at 11. I will have 32 days from my first jog back until Boilermaker Sunday, and I’m hoping to progress from 1.5 miles at 11:00 pace to 9.3 miles at 6:25 pace in just over four weeks. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me.
The good news is that running feels ok, but the bad news is that I had four weeks of forced rest, plus am still recovering from the surgery. I ran Steve’s 5K to Run Down Cancer on Saturday, and ran my slowest time since high school. While it was quicker than my first few runs back, it still was slower than I want to run for the Boilermaker. But, I felt fine aerobically, and it was just my legs that balked at the pace. So, I’m interpreting that as a good sign. Stay tuned for more updates in the next few weeks or months!
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