If I’m a little behind on reporting my half-marathon training, it’s mainly because there is so little to report. When last we talked about this, I’d had a flare-up of soreness and inflammation in my testy right hip flexors, probably as a result of slacking on my PT and doing to many runs in a compressed amount of time. I took most of week eight off and all of week nine. Week nine was dedicated to rest and physical therapy exercises:

Monday: PT. It was tough to drag myself off the couch where I was huddling in the blankets (stupid non-spring weather), but I made myself do it. Put on an episode of Parks & Rec and went through most of the standing exercises (squats, single-leg squats, resistance-band steps, single-leg balances, single-leg toe-touches) some floor things (planks with leg raises, bent-leg raises on stomach) and stretches (flexor lunges, flexor stretches on the table, figure four, pigeons).

Tuesday-Sunday: I had big plans to document all the PT I did this week, but it appears I only wrote down Monday’s efforts. It’s just as well: I find doing, writing, and thinking about PT boring. This is my blog; I don’t have to write about boring shit if I don’t want to. Here’s what happened: I did lots of PT, 4-5 days’ worth, I believe, and did not run a step. That was week nine.

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In Week Ten, spring finally made its long-awaited appearance. Sun! Flowers! Warmth! I should have been enjoying this all while outside, running the highest mileage week of my training plan, which would have culminated in a planned 13-14 mile run on Saturday. Needless to say, that was not going to happen. I told myself I could try running again, slowly and carefully.  I adjusted my goals: 4-5 days of PT plus three runs of whatever distance felt acceptable physically.

Monday: 2.5 miles. I felt okay during this run, but there was definitely some tightness in my psoas during it, and some light soreness after. I’m glad I stopped at 2.5 miles. I did a round of PT at home, mostly squats, balances, and other standing exercises.

Tuesday: PT.

Wednesday: PT.

Thursday: 3.2 miles. In Atlanta, with Scott Jurek and a bunch of other people. You read about it here. Banner run!

Friday: PT.

Saturday: Rest. 

Sunday: 3.1 miles. Slow and steady, through my neighborhood. It is finally starting to get hot here in Alabama, and I had waited until midday to do this run. I certainly felt it. That’s okay with me, though. I know I’ll be acclimated to the heat and humidity soon enough (hopefully in time for the April 27th race), and suffering through the first several hot runs is part of that process. You may consider this to be foreshadowing with respect to Week Eleven’s training. 

I’m not sure if I will wind up running the half marathon on the 27th, or the 10K. At this point, the longest run I’ve done was only nine miles. This coming week, I am going to attempt to run 8-10 on Saturday and see what happens. I really just have no idea what to expect. The frustration I feel on this subject is vast, my friends. VAST.