Green shoots in late September

Slowly starting to get myself back in to shape. I now have 2 weeks of 50 miles underneath me, I'll be mid-60's this week. Nothing to brag about by any means, but I have to start somewhere and I'm hoping that my longer-term base will help me to bounce back pretty quick.

Speed still sucks, but at least I'm feeling more comfortable with distance now.

Last night, I did a fartlek with Jason, going 1 minute, 2 minute, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... with the same minutes recovery in between each interval. He buried me by the end of it, but I at least kinda held on ok. Good enough for my first speed workout in months. More entertaining though, we ran it in Lincoln Park, taking completely random routes for each interval. It was actually a pretty cool idea. A workout like that will come in handy in a few months, when nobody wants to go to the track.

Monday, I did a double - 5 miles early, then 11 miles with 6 of it being tempo. I started out around a 6:25ish pace, dropped it to 6:15 for the 2nd and 3rd miles, then dropped it to 5:50ish for 4-6 miles. Averaged about 6ish. It wasn't easy, but again it was a start.

Chicago Marathon is in 1 week. Kinda bummed that I won't be racing it, but I'm still planning on doing half of it as a tempo run / marathon paced run. That'll be a true test to see how much work I have ahead of me. If I can survive 13 miles at 6-flat, then I'll feel better about rolling up for CIM.

It's amazing how quickly you can lose your conditioning... Rotterdam seems like a completely distant memory by now.

CIM is 10 weeks away. Yikes!

Back to the drawing board

I took over 6 weeks hiatus, lost most of my conditioning, fattened up a bit, cleared up 50% of my troubles (foot, not hip)... and now, I'm starting to run again.

After some solid winter training and 2 big PRs in the spring (here and here), I muddled along for three months without recovering. Lingering soreness and botched training forced me to re-think my summer and fall racing plans. Throw a market crash on top of it, and it made August training virtually impossible. Ramping up to 100 miles a week was just not feasible. The plug had to be pulled.

It's incredibly annoying to go from primo shape, to giving it all back, and now having to start from square 1 again... Regardless, I have to start from somewhere.

I'd like to say that I'm 100% healthy now, but I'm not. My foot is finally better. But I'm still experiencing hamstring/glute/hip troubles. Recently, I've had some success with some extremely aggressive massage therapy though. Fingers crossed that I'm close to getting this resolved in the next couple weeks... or at least to a point where I can train more comfortably + still work with the massages.

As of now, I have 2 straight weeks of about 30 miles under me, and feel that I can continue to run with at least that sort of volume. Yesterday I ran the Chicago Half Marathon strictly as a training run and finished at 1:24:56 (Thanks to Ryan Curry and Ken Fandell for keeping me motivated!).

None of this is coming easy, and I have a long way to go.... but it's a start. If I can pull it together, then I am registered for the California International Marathon, on December 4th. That's cutting it extremely close with my lack of recent running. I've been here before. Heaven forbid I get a full training session!