Looking Ahead: Lehigh Valley Marathon

Even though summer doesn't start until tomorrow, as usual, I am already thinking about the fall. Or actually, I have been thinking about the fall since about February. You kind of have to if you run races. The whole training thing, ya know.

Anyway, I am stunned to think that there is a mere 12 weeks between now and my first fall marathon, the Lehigh Valley Marathon on September 8th. In some ways, 12 weeks seems like a really long time. I mean, summer will be over by then and it has barely started! Then again, looking at my long run calendar, it seems like barely enough time to get things done.

I'm usually not one for fully drawn out training plans. I like to take each week as it comes. With only 12 weeks until race day, however, I figured setting up a long run schedule was probably a good idea to make sure I hit certain numbers. Since I had to back off the last month or so I am starting with just 10 miles this weekend and building from there. It's a pretty standard 3-week build/1-week cut back and repeat.

Hopefully all will go smoothly, I won't die in the summer humidity, and I will make it to the start line on September 8th. In all honestly, this is a race I want to PR. Not only did it have the 4th highest number of BQ-ers in 2012, but its average finish time that year was 4:02! So yeah, I'd like to race this one. A BQ would be great, but in lieu of chopping 11 whole minutes off my current PR, I'd be just as fine with any sort of PR. Baby steps, people.

This all depends, of course, on the summer weather. There's nothing like 90 degrees and 90% humidity to turn your 8 minute miles into 10 minutes miles.

And then you look like this after every run all summer

P.S. Lehigh Valley still has spots if anyone is still looking for an early fall marathon. Net downhill! Come on people!

The Latest

Oops, its been awhile. The last month and a half has been a whirlwind. Weddings, summer class, vacation planning, work, work, work, etc, etc.

When we last spoke I talked a little about my leg pains post River Towns Marathon. After taking one full week for recovery immediately after the race I had a good running week. Then, the next week I started having IT Band pain in my left leg (typical left leg!). The pain didn't start until between miles 4-6 and everytime it started I stopped running shortly thereafter. After 3 runs of this happening I finally cooled my jets and took five full days off. Since then I haven't had any pain. I also went back to PT and haven't been running "normal," but no pain is no pain. And hey, I can totally deal with 6 weeks of lesser running when I've spent 6-7 weeks with no running with my last two injuries. I caught this one in time and nipped it in the bud.

After spending about 3 weeks on the treadmill I went outside this Saturday for 8 miles. Man, were they tough! The first few miles felt like the worst, but by the end I think my body had re-acclimated to road running. The good thing is that since I never really stopped running, I haven't lost much endurance. That's nice, because I have a marathon in 12 weeks and no time to waste!

Since I've been such a bad blogger I may as well catch you guys up with some pics of the last 5 weeks.

I actually put on real people clothes for a few big events:



My sister's college graduation!

 

For a wedding

More wedding

Another wedding. PS. Don't wear black when its 90 degrees and an outdoor cocktail hour

I ate some yummy food:

Bean sprouts belong on everything



 

I went running in NYC:

 

I like to call this one "the first humid day of the summer when you realize how much things will suck until October"

 

All in all, things have been good here in Philadelphia. 

The Non-Marathon Birthday Weekend

If there was one thing I definitely wanted to do the weekend of my 27th birthday, it was run a marathon. Unfortunately, after last week's River Towns Marathon, I developed some right leg issues and had to forego this weekend's race.

Right leg aside, my recovery actually went picture perfect and all of the residual soreness went away by Tuesday. I doubled up on PT exercises and foam rolling, slept every night in my compression shorts and sleeves, iced all of my aching parts, and even got a sports massage on Wednesday.

I did run 3 miles on the treadmill on Thursday and while they weren't explicitly painful, they just didn't feel right. When I woke up Friday morning my right quad definitely felt inflamed and at that point I decided to drop out of Sunday's race. It was a really hard decision to make, but when I started bargaining with myself about how I would let myself start the race, but promise to drop out if it started hurting, I realized I shouldn't be running in the first place. My races this month were all about having fun, but how can I have fun if I spend a whole race worrying about whether something will start hurting too much? If you think there is a good chance you will DNF, save yourself the prolonged injury and just back off.

I have a doctor's appointment this Thursday and hopefully we will get things sorted out. I've never really had a right leg problem before. It's always in my left. And this time the pain isn't in one specific place. It comes in waves of tingling and moderate spurts of pain over the top and interior side of my quad and sometimes in my IT band right above the knee. I'm still continuing all of my hip strengthening exercises that solved my IT band pain in the winter and I've also been rolling out my lower back, which has helped immensely. I'm thinking it might be nerve related, but we shall see.

Despite my running plans being ruined, I still had an awesome birthday weekend. I had some fun shopping and then Mike took me to my favorite Philly restaurant, Audrey Claire.

Dessert was from Crumbs Cupcakes:

Overall, a great weekend. And, marathon or no marathon, I still got to run one last weekend, so I can't really complain!