Hello blogosphere. My body is doing pretty well, in case you were wondering. I even got on a bike last week! Just for 20 minutes of light spinning, but it still counts. My left glute is still a bit painful when I sit, but it’s just muscle tightness that I’m hoping will eventually go away with time and continued massage.
For awhile now, I’ve been hoping and planning to run a half-marathon on July 11th. However, I’ve decided to give up on that dream. Training for that race would commence next week, and I just don’t think I’m ready to start training. I’m still building a base. This week I’m running 3.3 miles, and I’d like to keep increasing my distance 10% a week until I hit 5 miles, which was my base run pre-injury. I’ll hold that distance for maybe a month or so before I start incorporating speed work, tempo runs, and longer distances. If I continue to be able to increase my mileage with no set-backs, I should be able to start “training” in early May.
Obviously it’s disappointing to not be able to run this race that I’ve been looking forward to. (It’s also the same race that I was planning to run at marathon distance last year before my injury got the best of me.) But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past year (last weekend was the one-year anniversary of my injury), it’s that one race is not worth risking injury or re-injury. So I’ll hold off on this race for yet another year. Maybe I can find a nice half-marathon to run next fall.
To help me get over my sadness at not being able to do this race, I’ve decided to sign up for a beginners’ triathlon in May. It’s super short: 500-yd swim, 5 mile bike, 5k run. Obviously, if I was at full strength, I would train for this by focusing exclusively on speed work. But I’m mostly just doing this race to be able to do a race. It’s not competitive (it’s geared toward families), and so I don’t really plan on pushing myself. Instead, I’ll just go through the motions at a moderate pace.
