Am I still a runner?

30 days off and it sure doesn't feel like it, will I ever get back to relaxing runs?

5 weeks of PT

After a trip to my primary care, referral to my surgeon, referral to a sports dr and forward to a PT, hopefully I'm making progress. After the 1/2 I basically could no longer do a situp or get out of bed without pain, I had pain radiating in my lower stomach and right groin. So I stopped running and for the last 5 weeks have been going to PT  twice a week. 15 minutes of electrodes followed by 30 minutes of hard message, not particularly enjoyable. But I have no pain getting out of bed and just went to a 2 mile run yesterday and a 3 mile run today pain free. We'll see how I feel tomorrow, but I am hoping I can get up to speed. This might take a while.

Run to Remember 1/2 Marathon

Nothing great to report about here. Still struggling with the groin pain and plodded through this one in 1:35. I ran the first 11 miles with my college friend Mike, a former UMass rower, I ran the last 2 miles hard and put some distance on him, just to see what my body could do. But not feeling the flow here, 7:20 pace should feel a lot better than that. The pain in my abdomen is back, I visited my primary care who said ice and ibuprofen and see a surgeon to rule out inguinal hernia. I keep reading about sports hernia and all these surgeries keep coming up, not good. Hoping it doesn;t have anything to do with the appendix cancer i had a few years ago. I'll schedule an appointment with my surgeon to check it out. Originally felt it after the 1/2 I ran last fall, summed it up as week muscles from my lack of core work and the back to back surgeries I had down there. Did some fall racing and marathon and backed of for a few months, started back up and seems like whenever I try to run hard it comes back.

East Boston Track.....kind of 400-800-1600-800-400

Did a little more track work this week. Mostly because it was windy and the airport loop I usually go on suck when it is windy. Fortunately the track in East Boston is somewhat sheltered. So here it is, 1 mile warmup, 1.5 cool down, 400 jog in between intervals:
400-1:37
800-3:31
1600-7:00
800-3:37
400-1:32

Zero Weeks

Zero weeks suck, I read guys who bitch about zero days. I can take the zero days, but the weeks set you back. I met my goal of 35+ per week in March and then had a collosally bad week ending 4/8.  The great part is all this crap happened on the same week:
1. Stomach bug Sunday night through weds (bonus lost 7 lbs)
2. Poison ivy flare up, left leg blown up so big my ankle was huge.  I actually went to the doctor thinking the poison ivy was so bad it was causing the stomach issues, but he said unlikely and in fact he would rather hold off on the prednisone until the stomach issues went away. Got the prednisone on Thursday and it started to go away-two weeks out and it is still there. I must be really allergic to this stuff or I got into a really bad plant along the Potomac on my DC trip.
3. Broke my left toe. I have never stubbed my toe so bad. Two weeks out and I am still favoring it when I run.

Anyhow, this was a miserable week and totally unpredicted, hopefully this is the only one like it this year and I can continue to put some distance on it and get back into shape for the 1/2 end of May. I need to start doing some speedier work, I might start finding some shorter between now and then to wake up. I had a nice jog on the charles today-what a nicer place to run. This crap in east boston is so uninspiring for pushing hard.

East Boston Track (1mile, 1/2 mile, 1/4 mile)

If you can call it a track workout. I just wanted to run a little faster than my normal plod lately. Rainy, windy and all alone out there, just a few basic laps to dust out the cobwebs. 1/4 mile jog in between, 1.5 warm up and 1.5 cool down.
1 mile: 7:13
1/2 mile: 3:16
1/4 mile: 1:28

Baystate Marathon Training Buildup

I thought I'd post my training calendar for the buildup to Baystate last year. Although this year has been off to a rocky start, I am confident I can work towards a fall marathon. Here are the 3 months of Marathon Training: