The Topic I Was Hoping To Avoid

So I have been marathon training for almost 2 months with the hopes of qualifying for Boston. While there have been too many workouts where I didn’t hit the paces and a few of the easy runs cut short, one thing that has remained consistent is my long runs. Despite constant self-doubt, I still believed deep down that I would be able to dig deep and pull together the grit to hit the BQ on race day. The main reason I want to achieve this goal is multi-fold. First, I am a runner and qualifying and running the Boston Marathon is considered a pretty premiere accomplishment. The second reason is because I said I wanted to hit the BQ and I need to prove to myself that I can do it. However, I honestly don’t love long distance running; I prefer to push myself on speed intervals and racing shorter distance like 5K or 10K. I think an occasional half marathon is good, but truthfully, I hate the long 2-3+ hour training runs. But, despite the fact that it has been a brutally cold winter and my workouts haven’t been perfect, I have kept pressing towards my BQ races (Tobacco Road Marathon on March 18^th and Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon on April 28^th).

A short little back story before we get to the present…Two weeks ago on my Saturday long run I had hip/ glute pain for the first 6 miles of my run but managed to finish the 18 miles at 8:15/ mile pace. I had no pain during my runs that following week and just dismissed those first 6 miles as ‘just being off’. Last Saturday, was a completely different story…at 8 miles in, the hip/glute issue reared it’s ugly head and the pain was excruciating…every single hip flexion and especially extension on the left side was complete pain. Everything was tightening up and when I kept seeing paces in the high 9’s and even a couple 10’s when I would glance at my Garmin, I decided to call it at 16 miles instead of the planned 20 miles. I took Sunday as complete rest day and on Monday decided to break up my 4 mile run up into three 10 minute segments on the treadmill, split up between my strength work. It was still stupid pain, but I pushed through it since it was only 10 minutes. Yesterday (Tuesday) was supposed to be my speed workout day and at 2 miles in, I called it because I was nowhere close to the pace and was probably doing more damage by compensating and running with a jacked-up gait. This morning I had my first appointment with Elite Performance Chiropractic (EPC) and learned what my biomechanist of a husband had already diagnosed…I have gluteus medius syndrome.

Another dang overuse injury that is most likely due to my negligence! When I am pressed for time (which let’s be honest, is all the time), my bike workouts are the first to go, closely followed by my strength workouts. In fact, last week was the first time in over a month that I did both of my weight lifting workouts and even then, they were still rushed and did not incorporate any dynamic warm-up drills. Also, my core work is non-existent, since I still haven’t gotten everything fixed from having diastasis recti from being pregnant over 2 years ago. So I haven’t wanted to face this, because I don’t want to shut marathon training down…I had to shut it down 3 years ago at nearly the same training point due to a stress fracture. The fact that the overuse injuries hit about 6 weeks prior to race day and always after I have done two 18 mile runs would make me think my body just can’t handle the volume…but, I can’t say that, because I haven’t done the full proper training (ie: strength work). So, where does this leave me….

Truthfully, I don’t know…I am going to work with EPC for Active Release Therapy & manual modalities and see how things progress. My plan right now is to dial the running back for a week, stretch the crap out of my hamstrings, hip flexors & glute, hit the gym like I should have been doing, work on strengthening my glutes with specific drills, get up more at work (another post topic for another day) and see how the body feels. Ideally I do not want to give up on the Tobacco Road Marathon because I still question if I would not have been able to pull the BQ time when I was training 3 years ago. However, I also do not want my first marathon to be a DNF or a slug fest. I do have plans for Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon at the end of April, but was hoping to use that as a back-up race to get a better BQ time. So today, I hit the gym…tomorrow I will hit the bike and/or rower, Friday I will go back to EPC, Saturday bike, and test out the run on Sunday with 3 or 4 flat miles…