My First Boston-niversary

Ah! Boston! I have been reading the interwebs & it seems that on Boston Marathon day, all running bloggers and/or social media runners are REQUIRED BY CUSTOM to post Boston Marathon related photos if they have them. #tbm #orsomething

This is the first Marathon Monday that I've had anything to contribute so please enjoy some of the insanity if you missed it the first time around (or even if you didn't):

Boston Standards Slashed Again

News & current events this week are pretty much hell and I keep thinking that if I go on the internet too much actual bees might come flying out of my mouth (and maybe the mouth of every other half-woke woman on earth). So forgive me if I pay a little attention to Other Things, things that maybe might NOT make bees fly out of my mouth.

If you're a distance runner, then you're almost certainly aware that it's That Week of the year, the one people wait all year for, wait multiple years for even, or just try to stay off the internet and pretend it's not happening. I'm still in a few online groups and it's been both exciting and gut wrenching to watch people waiting on tenterhooks for good or bad news.

And as of today, the news it out, and we've now seen, as many predicted, the widest margin yet between the BAA's established qualification times and the cutoff time for actually being accepted into the field. Last year it was 3:23 which a lot of people already thought was kind of batshit, and now for 2019 it's 4:52.

You might be thinking, "Well shit, at this point they should just lower the qualification standards again." And as it turns out, the BAA agrees with you. In the same post, they announced that the qualification standards for 2020 will drop another five minutes. (The last time they were dropped was in 2013, also by five minutes.)

So, yeah. If you were one of the lucky ones, all the congrats to you; I wish you the most excellent (and DRY) Boston experience. If you're dealing with the other side of the coin, hang in there and try again; you're clearly super, super close.

(Annnnd, I made it all the way through with no bees. #smallvictories)

The Art of Racing in the Rain (er, an Utter Deluge)

The year was 2012.

I'd run my first marathon a year before in what I thought was a pretty decent time for me, considering it was my first and *especially* considering that I'd been sick recently & run the whole thing with an asthma attack. 2012 had been a pretty epic year for me running-wise; in spite of not really training all that hard, I'd PR'd the 5K, 10K, and half marathon, and could not wait to take my second crack at the full. Since CIM had been so good to me the year before, I saw no reason to mess with any other race and signed up to run it again the first week of December.

Fast forward to the night before the race, with forecasters using words like "winter typhoon" and "atmospheric river" and "pineapple express". Weather people predicted multiple inches of rain between 5am & 10am (so, like, *right* during the race window) and 20-40mph headwinds. Several of us stayed the night before the race with Courtney's parents, just a short car ride from the start, and were definitely feeling more than a little trepidation about the weather.

This shot of Heather's will never not be the one I include
in any discussion of CIM 2012. Because, no. NO, SERIOUSLY.

The Life-Changing Magic of Bottoming Out

As you might imagine, after we got home from Big Sur on April 30th, I took a week completely off all physical activity (except going to work, which is to say, I went to work *at least* three days of five). Recently, though, I've gotten back to a basic level of activity. Very, very basic.

Some things I've been up to post-Boston/Big Sur:

Karate. I've been treating my class like my red headed step child these last few months & was starting to wonder if our students would even remember who I was. I still can't do any kicks properly but at least I can move around okay.

Boston 2 Big Sur: Should You Or Shouldn't You?

I don't remember where I first heard about Boston 2 Big Sur; it just seems like one of those things that's sort of been in the water since I started running distance races ten or so years ago. I'm sure I first read about it on someone else's blog back in the day, or one of my very earliest Bay Area running buddies mentioned it in passing. Who knows. But for about as long as I've wanted to try to qualify for & run Boston, I've always known that if I did, I would try to complete the Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge as well.

Part of this has to do with wanting to run Big Sur, but not wanting to devote an entire training cycle to it since it's pretty much guaranteed not to be a fast race. So Boston 2 Big Sur kind of let me do a two-for-one: Train for and run a "for-serious" marathon (Boston), then run another casually while I'm still in shape to finish the distance reasonably well.

There was also the issue of getting in; the race is popular enough that there's a lottery, so you can't just assume you'll be able to run it whenever you want. (See this post for more details about the Big Sur Lottery.) Boston 2 Big Sur was the closest I'd ever come to being guaranteed a spot.

Of course, I'd never tried to run two marathons just 13 days apart, let alone running one of the toughest road marathons around just days after running what is on its own not necessarily the easiest marathon around. When I first started running marathons, I never would have dreamed of attempting such a thing, but October 2017 rolled around and I was feeling a bit nervy, so I figured, "Ehhhhh, what the heck? It's not a challenge if you're sure you can do it!"

(At least 2018 was one of the 13-day gap years; some years the two are only 6 days apart & I'm not 100% sure I'm *quite* that crazy.)

When I was first thinking about doing Boston 2 Big Sur, I had a lot of questions. I'm grateful for everyone on the internet who wrote race reports and shared their experience, so I thought I'd pay it forward & add to the collective bank of information that's out there. Obviously these are all just my personal opinions, and they're extremely colored by my experiences & background, so, as always, YMMV.

Planning Your Boston Marathon Trip: Trip Logistics

This post is about the logistical issues involved in planning your Boston Marathon trip (at least, from the view of a first-timer from the opposite coast!). To read my Boston Marathon Race Report, click here.

Somehow it didn't occur to me until I was registered & in a training group that like any other race, Boston has "streakers" -- people who run the thing every year. It had kind of always struck me as a bucket list kind of thing, or at most an 'every-few-years-when-I'm-feeling-spendy' type of thing. But no; there were people in the Facebook group with 10, 15, 20, or more Boston Marathons under their belt, many of them even consecutive!

Of course, most of those people live within easy driving distance of Boston, where your participation costs are mostly the registration fee and a night or two of lodging. (And if you have friends or family in the area, perhaps not even lodging.) I know there are even West Coast folks or those from other far-flung areas of the country who still run Boston regularly, and I admire the commitment, but WOW, that's a significant logistical & financial commitment.

When I first signed up, I had a lot of logistical questions--when to travel, where to stay, food options, the expo, transportation issues, etc. While there was a lot of information out there on the internet, it wasn't always easy to find answers to specific questions I was wondering about. So I figured I'd do a post on my experience & hopefully add just a little more info to the pile & maybe someone out there will get a question of theirs answered just a little bit sooner.

Race Report: THE BOSTON FRICKIN' MARATHON

See also:

What It Was Like to Run the Boston Marathon in a Freezing Deluge (NY Times)

Harsh weather turns Boston Marathon into a punishing slog (Boston Globe)

Is today the worst weather in Boston Marathon history? (Boston.com)

In any case it's been *quite* the experience and I certainly have plenty to say about it! In fact, I have so much to say about different aspects of this race and the entire trip that it makes the most sense to break it up into a few different posts. Otherwise, I'm going to end up with a 40-page treatise that no one's ever going to read.

First things first, though: Race Report! I'll do logistics, etc. later; this one is going to be mostly just about my actual race experience & how it went, other than the lead-up you need to set the stage.

Race Report Spoilers: I MADE IT, GUYS!!!

So apparently a few people not on my social mediaz started getting really worried that a Boston race report was taking me so long & getting worried that maybe things went really really terribly. And let me just say for the record that yes, OMG, IT WAS TERRIBLE!

HOWEVER, it was *not* as terrible as it possibly could have been. The weather was a mess, 2500 runners left or were pulled off the course with hypothermia symptoms, including 25 elites, & something like 80 people were hospitalized, so honestly, I can't feel anything but incredibly lucky to have been able to finish & only suffered mild hypothermia after the race.

I have a ton more to say & will most definitely be writing a few different posts about it, but as we spent the rest of the week gallivanting around NYC eating & drinking all the things, not much has gotten done on that front yet.

In the mean time, though, if you need some proof....

(A friend also sent me this, which I have to say I am contemplating even though I'm not shopping this year. I didn't buy the overpriced ugly-ass jacket but this T-shirt may be just what I need to fully memorialize the experience.)

By the time you read this.......

By the time you read this, I'll most likely have made my way from Hopkinton to Copley Square, God willing & the crick don't rise. And honestly, crick-rising is a legitimate concern at this point, since we're supposed to get hit with a big, wet, windy storm sometime in the next few hours. Did I mention the wind is projected to be within 10 degrees of a direct headwind for 73% of the course? ~12mph or so at the start, and a healthy 28mph by the finish? GOOD TIMES!! :D

Is it disappointing to have such shitty weather? Sure. It's not like I was planning on a PR race, but I was hoping the trip would be at least mildly pleasant. But honestly, I don't feel as disappointed as it seems like I should. No one is ever entitled to perfect--or even not-awful--race day weather; you hope for the best, but you show up and run whatever kind of race day Mother Nature has seen fit to provide. I still feel super privileged to be here and am very cognizant of the fact that it very well could be my one and only shot. Everyone says Boston is magic regardless of the weather, that the camaraderie & adrenaline carries you through unlike in any other marathon, so that's the attitude I'm going into it with.

I also keep thinking back to CIM 2012, that god-awful, god-forsaken train wreck of a race year when everything was headwinds and sideways rain and timing mats shorting out under water & police rerouting the course around downed power lines. How at the time I swore that was the hardest run of my life, how I fought and fought and fought for the finish and felt like I'd been robbed of a PR by the weather. In retrospect, I'm kind of grateful for that race; all around me here in Boston and online people are freaking out about the weather and endlessly debating what to wear, and I'm feeling oddly calm about it. Like. How bad can it be? Worse than CIM 2012? Worse than Oakland three weeks ago when mile 8 felt like mile 20? I doubt it.

And, hey, if it is, I'll have a new war story. I'll run into other people who also ran Boston 2018, and we'll shake our heads and share war stories like it was so awful but inside feel sort of proud that we were there & made it through.

I'll write a more detailed post sometime soon, but in the mean time, please enjoy some shots of our first two days in Boston.

Catch you on the flip side of this beezie. Wish me luck and warm fingers!!

4 More Sleeps: The Race Plan

You can thank Sara at Middle Aged Runner for this little gem.

Well, here we are. Tomorrow I get on a plane to Boston & things start Happening.

It has not been the training cycle I'd hoped for--not even close. I've been so busy and stressed with the remodel, and traveling too much, and injured badly enough to lose a week of training on three separate occasions. My plantar fasciitis has come roaring back in the past few months, making running (and walking) excruciatingly painful at times, and for the last month on my runs I've felt completely, utterly exhausted, like I'm wearing lead boots all. The. Time. (We did solve that one--I am apparently badly iron deficient, and while I've started downing iron pills & red meat like it's going out of style, almost everything I've heard or read suggests that it really takes a good two months before it makes a noticeable difference.)

Which is all to say, I'm trying to be excited about the experience, but I am not betting on having a particularly fast race. In fact, I'll settle for finishing and mile 8 not feeling like mile 20. I had a massage therapist work on my foot and calf on Tuesday, which helped, and hopefully taper will have revitalized me a bit. (I keep reminding myself that for CIM 2016, I felt pretty bad and exhausted all the way up until the day before the race, so there's still hope!)

Still, in any case, I AM planning to go out there & run the best, fastest race that I can, so I think it's still worth thinking through the course & coming up with a race plan.

17 days, 5 cities, 2 marathons, & a partridge in a pear tree

Or: The Travel Crazies.

As I said before CIM 2016, I don't understand people who dread taper. I love taper. I'm great at taper. I'm a freakin' pro over here.

But as I've learned with the two other races I've flown to, it's harder to properly taper when you have so many balls in the air getting ready to travel, and then actually doing the traveling, while also managing to hold down/wrap up a full-time job, get a cavity filled, manage 47 crises related to your house remodel and oh yeah, not forget to do your taxes at some point.

And in case you'd forgotten, this particular trip is a bit more involved than most. Let us review:

- April 13-17: Boston Marathon (with side trip to our sister dojo at MIT, because not enough sportsing going on that weekend already)

- April 17-22: NYC vacation side trip

- April 22-25: Speak at Math Conference in DC (& also hang out with my college roommate)

- April 25-26: Late flight home, one night in my own (actually not even my own) bed, & an early-morning road trip to Big Sur

- April 16-29: Big Sur Marathon (plus a bit of general Big Sur sightseeing)

Are you tired yet? This was all my idea & I'm already tired. (BUT WHAT ELSE IS NEW.)

Free-Range Snow

(You may recognize this trail from Week 6, though it looked a bit different then....)

I'm not totally sure what's the point in continuing with these weeklies, but let's just go with it for shites and gigglz. (You know the smiling-crying emoji? Imagine that here. If you're on my social mediaz, you've seen those a lot lately so you're used to it.)

Boston Marathon Week 13 of 18: Some running was involved.

Man, you guys, I couldn't even call week 13 a mixed bag. It started out with a glimmer of hope but went downhill very very quickly for all kinds of reasons both physical and general life-related until on Sunday night I lay in a hotel bed in Texas, fuming over what a waste most of the week and weekend had been and over the fact that I could barely walk comfortably and also had to get on a plane back to SF in like five hours.

Boston Marathon Week 12 of 18: Mixed Bag

This week had its ups and downs. Ups included getting myself on the treadmill on a work trip for an 11+ mile pace workout and also getting my first 20+ miler of the cycle in the books; downs included doing only three runs and spending a couple of days fighting ALL NEW AND EXCITING is-it-or-isn't-it injury demons. Like come on, now, body. Enough of this horse poo.

Now, obviously, although my top priority is to be healthy enough to run and finish this race at all, I'm still planning to try to run as fast as I can, whatever that happens to be on race day. But as I look back over the last 12 weeks it's hard not to see a smoking, scorched-earth landscape littered with the debris of missed workouts and low mileage weeks. Oof. Not pretty.

I don't know if it's all the travel or the stress (and there is a LOT of stress right now not related to running, between work and travel and, oh yeah, the logistical nightmare that is Boston 2 Big Sur with a national speaking engagement right smack-dab in between the two) or maybe age is finally beginning to catch up with me. But man. The injury gods are not happy.

But I'm not calling it a lost cause yet! We've still got six solid weeks left, here, and I'm determined to wring every last bit of preparation out of them that my body will allow.

Boston Marathon Week 11 of 18: How Not to Plan Your Training Week

So, at least for now, it seems like I've gotten back to a normal training load, just in time to turn 37 last Friday. I decided against the Saturday 10K, for a lot of reasons, including 1) running 6+ miles at 10K race pace is REALLY DIFFERENT than a run-of-the-mill speed or tempo workout, and I don't want to risk my hip relapsing so soon after it's started to feel normal again; 2) I reallllly need to prioritize long runs right now given my distinct lack of them as of late, and racing on Saturday makes a Sunday long run potentially miserable or a bad idea or both (if not impossible); 3) $60 is pretty pricey for a 10K I haven't even really been training for; but mostly 4) I wanted to go out for a fun dinner on my birthday Friday night without having to worry about what I'm eating or drinking and going to bed early and getting up at the butt crack of dawn or feeling like crap at the starting line.

So. I'll race something else later. Right now we are seven weeks out from Boston and it seems prudent to keep one's eye on the prize so to speak.

As for week 11? Well, on the face of things, it looks like, "Hey, wow, a normal-looking marathon training load! Woohoo!" And there's some truth there. My hip has felt 100% completely fine (because you can bet your booty I wouldn't be running this mileage otherwise), and it DOES feel super good to complete all the workouts and finish the full long run and even hit all the paces. (I've even been doing the strength work!) So, in a lot of ways, #winning.

But there was also a little comedy of errors going on this week in terms of how I ended up running all those miles & workouts. So let us talk about how, in an ideal world, one would perhaps NOT structure their training week!

Boston Marathon Week 10 of 18: "altitude training" + should I run a birthday 10K?

Hello from snowy Park City, UT where our ski group is having our yearly (er...sort of) ski trip! This is the first year I've been able to go since 2013, so I'm pretty excited to get some skiing in.

I'm also trying to get a few solid runs in. It's probably no surprise that this has not turned into the victorious beast-mode Boston Marathon training cycle I'd hoped for, which is disappointing, but there are silver linings here & there. I'd been a little worried about how I was going to work in a 50+ mile week over the ski trip, but with my hip just recovering, it's nice to not have the pressure of trying to hit that much mileage, and when the slopes and hot tub are calling, it's that much easier to hold myself back from pushing too far.

For example, this weekend was supposed to be my first 20 miler of this cycle, but given that my longest run since all this hip drama started has been 8 miles, I wasn't holding out a whole lot of hope that that would happen. If I felt fine and had no pain in my hip, I was totally open to going for the whole thing, but I also didn't want to do anything stupid.

I'd mapped myself out a nice little 10 mile out-and-back with a loop at the end, and as it worked out, I started feeling just a bit of an ache right as I hit about eight miles. I wasn't worried about finishing the run back to the house, but I didn't try to go any further. As you all know, it's hard, because as distance runners our core competency is putting up with discomfort and pushing through, and part of me was definitely yelling, "JUST A COUPLE MORE MILES OUT AND BACK, YOU CAN DO IT!" And I just kept having to remind myself, "Well yes, obviously, I COULD do it. But let's maybe quit while the pain is 1-2 out of 10 & not eff up the possibility of running for the rest of the trip. Also hot tub is waiting."

We'll be in Utah until Wednesday, then it's back home for a few days before heading to Southern California for work. Friday (2/23) will be my 37th birthday, & I'm toying with the idea of running the Victory 10K the next day in Richmond. Before all the hip drama I felt like I was in pretty darn good shape, plus I'll be coming off of a week at altitude*. (I don't know if it really makes a difference, but I ran my second fastest ever half after a week in Breckenridge, CA on a hot day feeling like I didn't even try that hard, so true or not, I now feel like a pre-race week at altitude is good juju.)

*But also, can we talk about how altitude sucks? You're constantly dehydrated even if you're chugging water, you feel hungover the first few mornings even if you weren't drinking, and you can't do any workouts (or rather, there's no *point* in doing workouts) until you fully acclimate which apparently takes like 2-4 weeks. Damn my pansy-ass sea level system.

Partly, I want to race because I was super excited about Kaiser, and since that didn't work out, I feel like I am owed at least one good hard effort before Boston. The only reason not to would be whether I should be pushing my hip that hard, so that's the main thing I'll have to pay attention to and see what happens.

And, let's be honest, the other thing holding me back is remembering just how much it hurts to run an honest 10K. I wasn't in great shape for Victory 10K last year, but I ran it hard under the circumstances, and I still can't shake that feeling of getting to the halfway point and thinking "Sweet Jesus I don't think I have three more miles of this in me." Because, real talk, if you get to the halfway point of a 10K and you don't feel like you want to die, you're leaving something on the table.

~*~*~ Boston Marathon: Week 10 of 18 ~*~*~
Grand Total: 23 miles

* 21.45 easy
* 1.55 speed

Monday 2/12: Karate. This was the day of my PT appointment. (If you missed that post & are into pictures of nasty PT-inflicted bruises, that one's for you.) If it hadn't been for that appointment I probably would have tried to get in a few easy miles, but I was super thankful to get the PT appointment that soon.

Tuesday 2/13: 2.75 warm up, 2 x (3 x 300m / 100m jog) / 300m jog, 2.7 = 7 total.

My hip felt 100% fine (other than the bruising), and since the PT had given me the clear to run as long as it was pain-free, I decided to attempt this workout and see how it went. The intervals were short and few, and it's easier to tap out of an interval at the track than anywhere else. I jogged 2.75 easy miles there for a warm up, did my drills, then took off on the first interval. The target time was 1:10 per 300m, but all I was thinking was "Let me not worry about the pace and just coast through these and see how the hip feels at a higher cadence," and lo and behold, I finished it 1:04, so, cool???

Not 100% out of the woods yet, but I can't tell you how excited I was to finish the whole workout plus the 2.7 miles back home with no pain in my hip. Pretty encouraging!

Wednesday 2/14: Karate + hip exercises

Thursday 2/15: 6 easy.

This was a long travel day for us so I had to get up early to get it done. It was 8-10 on the plan but I just was not getting up any earlier.

Friday 2/16: Ski!

Don and I arrived a couple of days before the rest our ski trip group, so we used the extra time to get in a day at Snowbird just outside of Salt Lake City. Pretty good day of skiing and no hip pain! Though towards the end of the day some douche bag did smash a metal lift bar down onto my knee (repeatedly, because he didn't get why it wouldn't come all the way down), leaving me with a nicely swollen and bruised right knee. :-/

Gorgeous day at Snowbird!

Saturday 2/17: 10 easy + hip exercises. Not the 20 that was on the schedule, but THAT IS OKAY.

Sunday 2/18: Ski!

I'm only a kind of-sort of-okay skiier, so it usually takes me a day or so of skiing nice friendly blues to remember how to do it & get up the nerve to get onto some black runs. This was my last black run on Sunday at Canyons in Park City.

Working up the nerve to hurl myself down the mountain in a blizzard.

I'm hoping to get at least one more run in this week in Park City. My hip still gets sore after longer runs but it also seems to go back to normal a day or two later, so if I have to only train every other day for the rest of the cycle, that'll be okay as long as I can get the long runs in. Right now, being able to complete the distance in terms of my hip is my biggest concern. If I have to run Boston a lot slower than I'd hoped and just finish, I am 100% okay doing that, but it means that at some point very soon I'm going to have to be able to do some for-real long runs.

But in the mean time...more skiing. ;)

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Boston Marathon Week 1 of 18: On your mark, Get set...

Boston Marathon Week 2 of 18: speed, snow, & vertical

Boston Marathon Week 3 of 18: Foiled By Weather & Travel

Boston Marathon Week 4 of 18: There's "hills" and then there's HILLLZZ

Boston Marathon Week 5 of 18: Not the greatest of weeks...

Boston Marathon Week 6 of 18: Winter Running: Take 2

Boston Marathon Week 9 of 18: Grumpy Hip is Grumpy

Boston Marathon Week 9 of 18: Grumpy Hip is Grumpy

So, I have fallen way behind in these weekly updates, which has partly to do with screwing up my hip and, y'know, not having much to update about. It also has to do with having just been legitimately busy in the past couple of weeks. When I'm super busy but there's cool stuff to blog about, I seem to somehow carve out the time, but busy-ness + injury depression/lack of much to talk about tends to equal blogging fail.

Thankfully, things seem to be coming back together now (FINGERS CROSSED), so what the heck, have a little update!

In my KP Half race report (such as it was), I mentioned that I've been having this hip issue lately. For context, here's the timeline:

• Tuesday 1/9: Track workout; I'd had a very very minor ache in my hip, but somewhere around the middle of this workout there was a sudden, sharp WHOAH WTF WAS THAT kind of pain. It went away, but my hip still hurt after. (This was the day of my car accident, but I really do not see how that could be related.)

• Wednesday 1/10: Threw my back out & couldn't really walk comfortably for the next two days. (This very well could have been related to the accident.)

• Friday 1/12: Everything feeling fine, 10 mile tempo run w/ no problem.

• Saturday 1/13: Hip super sore with moderate+ pain if I tried to run. Skipped running.

• Sunday 1/14: 16 miles with no pain

• Monday 1/15: Super sore hip, but it was a rest day so ok.

• Tuesday 1/16-Sunday 1/21: Normal 50 mile week, completely fine with no pain.

• Tuesday 1/23: The hip thing came roaring back with a vengeance during a hotel treadmill speed workout.

• Wednesday 1/24-Saturday 1/27: Have the flu/feel awful/don't run

• Sunday 1/28: 6 easy miles, can feel the hip but not awful

• Monday 1/29: Minor soreness, not that bad

• Tuesday 1/30: Quit track workout 2 miles in with another sharp, sudden WTF pain

• Wednesday 1/31-Saturday 2/3: Don't run, hope for miracle

Pretty much as soon as the hip started feeling funny, I was back in the Church of Strength Work desperately trying to invoke the runner's version of absolution for cross training laziness (squats, lunges, clam shells, etc.). When my hip did not magically heal itself in time for KP Half in spite of five days of zero running, I decided to haul out the big guns & make a PT appointment.

The good news: My insurance doesn't require getting a dr. referral in order to see a PT. Woohoo!

The bad news: Only some places are in network (read: covered by insurance) and the ones that are have openings in mid-March at the earliest. (One place: "We could schedule you on May 16, how does that work for you?")

So. I sucked it up & went to the cheapest of the places that could see me right away & just paid the out-of-pocket rate. Good thing this is the Year of No Shopping so I've got all that extra phat cash lying around!!

(Lololol *cry*. Tell me more about how running is the cheapest exercise there is and all I need is a pair of shoes.)

I saw a new-to-me PT in San Francisco this past Monday who I like so far, and his assessment was pretty much that I'd minorly strained a hip flexor/adductor somehow & not really noticed, then made it a lot worse with the repeated motion of running until I finally started to feel it. He thought the original minor strain was probably a result of the muscle being super tight and, yes, my getting lazy about strength work through the holidays (knowing that at certain points in the past hip muscles have been my kryptonite). He spent the next hour and a half grinding the ever loving shizzle out of it with an elbow and some Graston tools, then stuck me on an e-stim machine with ice for 10 minutes.

Post-Graston. From my PT with love.

I know what you're thinking; super hot, right?

He gave me some supplementary exercises to strengthen the hip muscle and suggested I come back in as often as my wallet will allow I can to get it Graston'ed a bunch more and in the mean time continue to roll the ever loving shizzle out of it with a lacrosse ball.

There is more good news, though. I've been able to do several short-to-medium distance runs this past week (up to 8 miles) with no pain, and the PT said that as long as I continued to have no pain, I could keep running and very conservatively bump up the distance and speed. I happen to have a pretty short, easy speed workout (6 x 300m's) on the calendar yesterday so went ahead and tried it, thinking there is nowhere easier than the track to tap out of an interval should things start to feel off, but I finished the whole thing with no pain whatsoever (and bonus, no trouble hitting the paces) so we'll call that a win for now.

On Thursday we're off to Utah to ski for a week, where I may or may not be doing much skiing, and expect the footing may be a bit too treacherous for anything more than easy miles. I also obviously expect to be the envy of everyone in the apres-ski hot tub (see above). For now it just feels bruised and tender (wonder why), and hopefully it will continue to heal pain-free as I (very gradually) ramp up the mileage.

Will report back soon................

~*~*~ Boston Marathon: Week 9 of 18 ~*~*~
Grand Total: 17 miles, all easy

Monday 2/5: Rest

Tuesday 2/6: 1 hour strength work

8 sets seated row @ 55 lb. alternated w/ 8 sets push-ups (2 x 15, 2 x 12, 2 x 10, 2 x 8 for both), 8 sets weighted step-ups w/ two 15 lb dumbbells alternated w/ 8 sets prone jack knifes on the physio ball (same as above), clam shell series both legs (4 x 12 each side), + 20:00 elliptical because a girl's got to do something resembling cardio. SEE ME BEING GOOD AND DOING MY STRENGTH WORK??????

Wednesday 2/7: 1.5 hours karate

Thursday 2/8: 6 easy. No pain??????

Friday 2/9: 40:00 strength work + 3 easy to the gym & back

3 x 15 deadlifts @ 85 lb, 10 x pike reverse leg lifts w/ straight legs (btw: even just 10 of these are enough to reduce my transverse abs to jello right now), clam shell series both legs (4 x 12 each side), 4 x 15 dumbbell thrusters w/ two 15 lb dumbbells, 4 x 15 weighted static lunges w/ two 15 lb dumbbells.

Saturday 2/10: 8 easy, beautiful miles through Golden Gate Park in gorgeous weather (see: the photo at the top of this post). Also no pain!!!! Though, hoo boy, did my legs feel like jello halfway through.

Sunday 2/11: Rest

Next week: Pray I don't have any ill-fated encounters with ice. D:

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Boston Marathon Week 1 of 18: On your mark, Get set...

Boston Marathon Week 2 of 18: speed, snow, & vertical

Boston Marathon Week 3 of 18: Foiled By Weather & Travel

Boston Marathon Week 4 of 18: There's "hills" and then there's HILLLZZ

Boston Marathon Week 5 of 18: Not the greatest of weeks...

Boston Marathon Week 6 of 18: Winter Running: Take 2

Boston Marathon Week 6 of 18: Winter Running: Take 2

Friends, we are officially a third of a way through this training cycle and I'm not exactly sure how that happened.

There's something about hitting 50 miles a week for the first time in a training cycle that makes it start to feel real. All through training for RNR San Jose and even through November and December running in the low to mid 40s felt physically terrible, as if I were training much much harder than I actually was, and it was hard to imagine getting back into that 50-60 mpw marathon training zone. Thankfully in the past few weeks something seems to have shifted and longer, harder workouts are finally--FINALLY!--starting to feel good again.

{proceeds to cross alllll the phalanges & knock on alllll the wood...}

~*~*~ Boston Marathon: Week 6 of 18 ~*~*~

Boston Marathon Week 5 of 18: Not the greatest of weeks...

The one advantage of evening long runs through Golden Gate Park:
Seeing the Conservatory of Flowers lit up for the Summer of Love

Not a great week for me, guys. I had a couple of solid workouts but that's pretty much all I can say. Things were going just fine until Tuesday morning when I was rear-ended on the way to work. I was driving in the far left lane at normal freeway speed when some dude slammed into me at what must have been 90-100mph without even trying to stop. My car skidded all over the road and I was just lucky I was able to keep it from slamming into the freeway divider or careening into the other lane & getting hit again.

Boston Marathon Week 4 of 18: There's "hills" & then there's HILLLZZ.

Oof, running a bit behind getting this one up. Progress, not perfection, right?

As I've started actually-for-real training for this race & occasionally chatting with other runners about it, people keep bringing up the course. Like "Have you ever run the course?" "Have you ever been out there on those hills?" "It's a really tricky course, you know." "OMG those HILLZ. Watch out for those HILLZ, man!"

And I'm like, "Okay? I train in San Francisco?" I mean. No disrespect to the Bostonians out there, but I did live in Boston for three months and, dudes, we have different definitions of what hills are.