On the mend

Injuries are no fun. Injuries weeks before are a marathon are less fun. I'll spare the reader the boring details, but suffice to say a couple of weeks ago something in my hip started hurting. I could run - sometimes with pain, sometimes with pain that only set in hours afterward and got fairly intense. Naturally, with three weeks to go to the Twin Cities marathon, there weren't many worse times for it to happen.

I decided the best approach was an aggressive one: a full week with almost no running, except one four-mile test run in the middle which didn't particularly agree with my hip. And since I couldn't figure out any cross-training exercises that don't involve using your hip (elliptical? nope. cycling? nope. swimming? nope.) I ended up sitting around doing nothing except stretching and icing.

Any runner will tell you that the taper is when you get yourself worked up in a nervous lather, questioning your training, stressing over your runs, eagerly anticipating the big day. I mean, just look at bl's recent posts. But spending a whole week of it inactive while nursing an injury made me go through all of that times about five.

Happily, I've resumed my regular schedule of taper running this week, and all seems to be back to fairly normal. I'm ditching the one or two remaining speed workouts I had left and just doing regular runs, and I'm not thrilled that I missed a 17-miler last weekend, but I guess it could be a lot worse.

My participant guide for the Twin Cities Marathon came in the mail today. It's getting close.