The Past Four Months: Rollercoaster

I know I went incognito for four months and left everyone hanging, so I'm going to give a short recap of my past four months and try to get back to the usual blogging grind.

So a lot has happened over the past four months: I started a job at TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) as a Power Contracts Analyst in January, I started back up training for my third Boston Marathon in a row, and I recently got engaged to Lally. Not to downplay the other two, and trust me, I'm most excited about the engagement and wedding planning for August 2011, but since this is a running blog I will recap my training progression from November to today.

I started off my Boston training in mid-December. The first of the 18-week plan started December 13th. I started out at 47 miles that week and gradually picked up the mileage over the first eight weeks to 84 miles a week. My first race was the Calhoun's 10-miler, which I ran in 58:11, which I was pleased with considering I hadn't incorporated any speed workouts or tempo workouts yet in my weekly schedule. My highest mileage week was three weeks ago, in which I reached 100 miles. It was also during that week that I ran an extremely hilly 30k (18.6 miles) road race in 1:49:02 (5:51 pace). That was my PR on that course by more than two minutes and I felt great. Since then I ran some really strong workouts with my fellow Boston training partner Ethan. After running 10 X 800s at a 2:32 pace last Tuesday, I was projecting that I would finish Boston sub 2:32. But instead that workout proved to be my downfall as of now. It took me three days of hard running after the workout to figure out that the pain and tightness in my right hamstring was not soreness from the Tuesday workout, but a deep pulled hamstring. I immediately went into rehab mode and took off Saturday and Sunday, hoping it wasn't that bad. Now it's Thursday and I haven't been able to run much of anything the past six days, and I don't see it improving in the short term. My hamstring is extrememly weak at the moment, and I usually have to stop running after going a few miles or so. The one positive is that I've been able to do a lot more stretching in the absense of running, and I've noticed my flexibility has greatly improved. I've already decided to drop out of the Knoxville Half Marathon this weekend and I'm praying this injury improves dramatically over the next week or I'm going to have to scrap Boston as well. If that happens, I will still go up there and cheer on everybody and do the Boston thing.

Wish me luck through this. I'll take anything I can to rid myself of this injury. I will keep everyone updated on my progress. Hope everyone is doing well in running and life!

Bobby