I did it.

Sometime after I started seriously running just under two years ago, part of me decided that it wasn’t enough to run a 5K, or a 10K – I would someday run a marathon. Nevermind that the longest I’d ever run before was 6 miles, back when I was 18 and invincible. Somehow, I’d do it.

And somehow, I did.

Last spring, I picked the 2010 Disney Marathon as the one I’d run. In late August, I began training specifically for this race, building up across a stair-step set of races (including a 15K and a half-marathon) throughout the late summer and early fall. I found friends to train with in early winter, and kept with them in the final month before the big race. And near the end of all that, I began to realize that the marathon was no longer a pipe dream, but was right there within reach.

Pre-race goals

My first and most important goal: finish the race, on my own two feet, under my own power. Based on my two half-marathon times, I figured I’d come in somewhere around 5:15. As my training came to a close, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could break a 5-hour time. And in the final days before the race, I embraced that as a goal, too.

Cold start

The week before the race, weather forecasts looked grim on race day: arctic blasts were sweeping through Florida, and the predicted temps would be in the 20′s at gun time. I prepared for the cold as best I could: tights, gloves, even a throwaway scarf buried under two layers of winter gear and a few layers of tech shirts. I also was able to grab a mylar blanket from the car, a relic from the Gasparilla half-marathon I’d run in March.

Sure enough, on race day, the weather was so cold it made national news. The runners in the previous day’s half marathon had suffered through sleet and freezing rain; for the marathon, our weather was colder, but less wet.

I had caught the bus over from our hotel. Disney is so jammed that you have to be on the bus by 4:00 am or, they warn you, you’ll miss the start. The buses dumped us off in the EPCOT parking lot, where I met up with Rob, a fellow Kickrunners member, and we walked together about a half-mile to the starting corrals.

Disney starts runners in multiple waves, based on estimated time – I was in corral “G”, only three ahead of dead last. As I waited in the dark for the fireworks to go off, I felt the first surge of emotion, one of several I’d experience in the the day, chanting to myself: I’ve got this. I’ve got this.

The first five miles

The fireworks went off at 5:40 a.m., and the first wave shot out. Our corral gradually got closer to the start. About fifteen minutes after gun time, we were finally off, and it felt great to be moving at last. The cold didn’t seem to be a factor at all – within a couple of miles, I had tucked my gloves into my pocket, and even unzipped my coat a little.

I felt strong, and even though the crowd was thick, I was moving right around my desired pace. I had previously calculated that an 11-minute-mile pace was both attainable (I had run 15 at a 10:30 pace a few weeks before) and gave me about a twenty-minute cushion to get me to the finish in less than five hours. So I used that 11-minute mile as my guidepost.

During the first five miles, as we looped around the main roads outside EPCOT, into the park, under Spaceship Earth, and back out to the road, I started at 11:00 on the dot for the first mile, slowing slightly to 11:20 for the next, then ripping off the next three miles at 10:30, 10:35, and 10:10. Part of that was the exhilaration of finally running the race, part of it was cruising through EPCOT pre-dawn, and part of it was that I got to see my family waiting for me just as I entered the park, in the crowds under the monorail.

As I finished the first five, I almost felt cocky.

That didn’t last.

Six through ten

About mile six, I started feeling like maybe I had done a bit too much carboloading the night before, and started looking for a place to start unloading. I ended up burning almost ten minutes total in two bathroom stops, one in mile 6 and one in mile 9. Aside from that, though, I felt pretty good – my pace was still pretty strong, between 10:30 and 11:00 when I was actually running, and the route was long, flat and straight as we moved from EPCOT to the Magic Kingdom. This was also one of three long stretches of uninterrupted road, so Disney had provided entertainment by the roadside – marching bands and DJ’s. By the end of mile ten, I was just about two hours in, and still feeling like I had a good shot at making it under five hours.

The Magic Kingdom to the Animal Kingdom: the middle distance

Entering the Magic Kingdom, running up Main Street to the cheers of the crowd, is like nothing I’ve ever done before. Have you ever been in the “Happiest Place on Earth,” with hundreds of people cheering for you? It’s an experience I’ll never forget, and one I highly recommend.

Main Street was all too brief but we moved right through Tomorrowland, around the carousel, and then up and through Cinderella’s Castle. This is one of the few places I stopped to pose for a picture, as I traded cameras with another runner so we could each take the other’s picture. Then it was up, through, and into Frontierland, then out the park through a “backstage” area behind Splash Mountain – appropriately used as a water stop.

Once we left the Magic Kingdom, the next few miles were another long stretch of road past a few of the resorts and then down past some truly “backstage” areas, like the sewage treatment plant. As I passed the Polynesian Resort, I strained to catch a glimpse of Dineen and the boys, who had planned to be in that spectator’s area. Unfortunately, I didn’t see them – as I learned later, I was “too fast” for them to catch me there.

At the time, I wasn’t feeling too fast. The cold air – still in the mid 30′s, which even in January is crazy for Orlando – was taking its toll, and as I passed the halfway point, I clocked in at 2:37 – a full seven minutes under my goal split and far off my 11-minute pace. Somehow, I had slipped to 12-minute miles and combined with the two restroom breaks that pace put me in the hole for a five-hour finish. I tried to pick up the pace a little, but by the end of mile 15, I was unable to maintain an 11-minute pace, which I would need if I wanted to make up 7 full minutes in the back half. But with the last three parks still to come, I put that thought out of my mind and hoped that warmer temperatures combined with more inspiring crowds would help me surge at the end. I passed the Disney greenhouse complex – overpowering fertilizer aroma, anyone? – and entered the Animal Kingdom.

Animal Kingdom to Hollywood Studios: in marathon, wall hits you.

I barely remember anything about running through the Animal Kingdom, except that I kept wanting to go faster than my legs would allow. I remember thinking that if I finished 18 miles in 3:30, I could still finish the last 8.2 in 90 minutes, and make my five-hour goal. But that wasn’t to be – the clock showed 3:36 as I finished that eighteenth mile, and then I started doing mental math on what it would take to finish in 5:05, or 5:15.

On the map, the stretch between mile 18, where you leave the Animal Kingdom, and mile 22, where you enter Hollywood Studios, looks deceptively straightforward – a long, straight shot down Osceola Boulevard, a short turnaround at mile 21, then turn north towards the park. Of course, this is also where the hardest part of the marathon begins – the part where you hit the wall.

It was still cold, and perhaps even colder than it had been earlier in the race. Many of the water stops were coated with ice where water had spilled on the still-subfreezing roadway. My legs felt stiff and leaden, and my pace went from 11:29 in mile 18 to a disappointing 14:19 in mile 20. I remembered being told that mile 20 was the mental and physical halfway point in the marathon, in terms of difficulty, and I could feel every bit of it by that point. My training plan had never taken me beyond the 20-mile mark – and if it had, I might have up and quit training – so every step was a new personal record for endurance, but they were victories I could not feel.

I remember trying to just gut it out, as if I could keep running just on sheer determination. Every time I tried to draw on that willpower, it kept me going for a hundred yards at a time, sometimes more, but at some point my legs would stop responding, except to tell me of their aches and pains, and I would slow to a walk. This, then, was the bleakest part of the race for me. I knew I could make it to the finish line under my own power, but I might spend another two hours on that last six miles, walking most of the way.

Sometime during this stretch, Jeff Galloway passed me. He was walking.

I kept plodding, and turned north towards Hollywood Studios.

The final push: Mile 23 and beyond

I don’t remember much of Hollywood Studios, either, except for brief flashes. Mile 22, instead of energy gels, they gave us little bars of Hershey’s chocolate. It was the best chocolate I’d ever tasted, even close to frozen solid. We passed through the “costuming” tunnel, where you could watch workers put together Disney costumes of all kinds – princess dresses, superhero outfits, and so on. I blurted out, “No capes!” and drew confused, concerned looks from some of the runners around me. Haven’t you ever watched The Incredibles? I wondered to myself.

Maybe they were right to be concerned.

At the Mile 23 marker, I paused for my only character pose of the day. All the previous picture stops had long lines, and I didn’t want to waste time in them when I still had a shot at a goal time. But now that all time goals were out of reach, I felt pretty good about grabbing a picture with Mike Wazowski – “With one eye!” – from Monsters, Inc.

After leaving Hollywood, the course followed the waterway leading around the Boardwalk Resort and into EPCOT. More and more spectators lined the course here, and I felt my energy, and my pace, pick up a little every time someone called me out by name – listed on my race number – and cheered me on. (Pro tip: if you need people cheering for you personally, stay away from the purple-clad Team in Training runners. They suck up crowd support like there are no other runners on the course.) Mile 25 melted away, and suddenly I was entering EPCOT.

The five hour mark had long gone, and I was looking at 5:30 or more, but as I started that last mile it suddenly sank in that I was about to finish a marathon. Running past China and Mexico felt faster than it really was, partly because I was on familiar ground and partly because I was so close to the end. Suddenly, I was running again, not just plodding. I looked every spectator in the eye, memorizing the faces as I savored the last few moments. The Mile 26 marker greeted us as we hit the parking lot, and suddenly I could hear the roar of the finish line.

Then I saw it.

Then I started really running.

The big finish

Anyone who’s run with me knows that I tend to finish strong. No matter how tired I am, no matter how much I’ve left on the course before, seeing the finish line somehow flips a switch in me, putting me in an involuntary overdrive. And my first marathon was no different. Once I saw the finish line, I drifted towards the side of the pack, and my arms and legs started churning as I picked up speed. In the last hundred yards, I passed runner after runner – my Garmin later told me I hit a top speed of 10mph (about 6:00 minutes per mile) – and crossed the line with my arms raised in triumph. Final chip time: 5:36:56 – far beyond my five-hour aspiration, but a substantial achievement even so, especially considering the extreme weather conditions.

Family and friends were in the gallery just beyond the finish line, and somehow we saw each other just as I slowed to a walk. The volunteers handed me a mylar blanket, put the fantastic medal around my neck, and I went to meet up with my family.

Post-mortem

Final time: 5:36:56.
Average pace: 12:40.
Overall finish: 11011 out of 16833 finishers (out of 24,000 registrants!)

It’s hard for me to believe, as I write this, that I’ve finished a marathon. I would have liked to do it faster, and maybe someday I will, but it’s all to easy to forget that not very long ago it was impossible for me to even entertain the idea of trying to run a marathon in any time, let alone a decent time. If I ever run a marathon again – and it’s way too soon to ask me if I will – I would aim for milder weather, but I’d probably prepare in much the same way as I did this one, although I’d adjust my training to accommodate a time goal, not merely aspiring to finish. Until then, I plan on training for and running multiple half-marathons to keep in fighting trim, and within a reasonable training distance away from a marathon should the spirit move me.

Check out my Disney Marathon picture set.

Eighteen miles, in a car, is not far at all. It’s a brief excursion; a side trip; a short jaunt.

On two feet, eighteen miles is brutal.

Thirteen? Doable. Fifteen? Challenging, but still enjoyable. Eighteen miles is pain – a totally different beast from the slightly shorter distances.

I’ve tried it twice now, once by myself, once with a friend who’s also training for Disney. Both times, I’ve hit a wall, where it seems like the body just refuses to obey commands to keep moving forward. Fifteen miles takes me, on average, about 2:45 to finish. Eighteen, I can’t finish under 3:35.

That extra three miles shouldn’t take 50 minutes.

And if eighteen is this hard, what’s going to happen in four weeks when I try to tack more than eight miles on top of that?

The one thing I know I can improve is my pre-run dinner. Both times, the night before my run was not the pasta-rich carbo-loading I have enjoyed before my more successful runs. So next week, I will not deviate from the pasta plan, and hope that makes a difference trying to run twenty. Something’s got to change dramatically between now and next week if I’m going to finish this marathon next month.

Experienced runners, feel free to chime in with advice.

( Photo Source / Photo Rights )

Sunrises and dolphins

The lunatic ran along the edge of the bay, under the just-risen sun. It was 7:30 in the morning, and the lunatic was just finishing his eleventh mile.

The lunatic hit a milestone just before the fourteen-mile marker. It was the longest distance he’d ever run. As if to celebrate the accomplishment, a pod of dolphins waited there, splashing in the sunlit water, just ten feet from the seawall.

The lunatic and I could not be more different. He had risen long before the sun, then traveled twenty miles by car, to go downtown and run along the edge of Tampa Bay. He planned to run fifteen miles – something most sane people never do in their entire lives, let alone at 5:30 in the morning.

I, on the other hand, had a lifetime devotion to sleeping in. On a Saturday morning at 5:30, or 7:30, or even 9:30 for that matter, it was almost a guarantee you’d find me in bed, sleeping off the activities of the night before, whatever they had been. And running? For such ridiculous distances? I’d much rather sit on my ass.

But the lunatic was up, and out, and running. He was running along the southern edge of Davis Island, by the airport, when the sun came up and washed the sky from starry dark blue to pale gold. He was seven miles and just over one hour into the run.

Blue Sharks

Why so early? Why so far away? Because the lunatic wasn’t alone. For several years, a local running group called the Blue Sharks has run the same eleven-mile route every Saturday morning starting at 5:30. The organizer, a former runner himself, drives ahead of the runners to set out water and Gatorade every couple of miles. At the first water stop, he counted the participants: “… seventy-eight… seventy-nine… eighty… eighty-one…”

Runners in training for marathons and half-marathons run the eleven together, and those who need longer runs extend their routes further down Bayshore Boulevard. The lunatic, today, was one of those going the extra distance.

The transformation

I had known other people like the lunatic. I’ve had friends who were marathoners, who got up in the dark to run freakishly far. I would shake my head, firm in the conviction that I would never do something so ridiculous.

But then the lunatic took over. Now, I’ve run two half-marathons: Gasparilla and Blue Moon. I’m training for a marathon of my own in January. I need to get in long training runs of fifteen, eighteen, twenty miles in the next eight weeks.

So on a perfect November Saturday, I got up at 4:30 in the morning to join a bunch of other people of questionable sanity to run longer than I ever had before. I am the lunatic, and I run to beat the sun.

What sane person runs thirteen miles in a row, on purpose, on a Saturday, getting up before sunrise to do it?

Apparently, me. The Gasparilla Distance Classic Half and Full Marathon were March 1, 2009, and there I was, in the dark, waiting for the gun, surrounded by other crazy people getting ready to run.

I had begun this journey about a year before, when I picked up running as (I thought) a way to get in shape to get back into wrestling. I’ve run three short races and signed up for this half-marathon, but have yet to step on a wrestling mat. So we know how that worked out.

On this dark morning, I wasn’t alone. My neighbor, Sarah, was running the half too. She has multiple half and full marathons under her belt and was running for fun. I knew I wouldn’t see Sarah during the race, as she’s a faster and more experienced runner than me. The real fan club, the ones as crazy as I am, was my family – my wife, two kids, and even my dad, all of whom got up before daybreak to come cheer me on.

I had two goals on race day: finish on my own two feet under my own power, and do it in 2:30 or less. In prior, shorter races, I tended to start off too fast, so I found the pace group for the marathon (who would share the first seven miles of the course with the half) that seemed to be the fastest I would want to run the opening miles. That should have been the 11 minute/mile group, but for some reason I glommed onto the 10:18 minute/mile group, figuring if I ran faster than that, I knew I’d be in trouble.

The gun went off, and we crossed the start line about two minutes later. With the waiting over, and the race begun, my nerves had largely subsided, and I focused on sticking with the group in the densely-packed street.

The first mile, our “gun time” was just over 12 minutes, on pace with what I’d expected. We hit the bridge that would take us to our loop around Davis Island, and the crowd jammed together, faster runners jumping on the sidewalk to pass the pack. At the end of the bridge, Mile Marker 2 and the clock told us we were at 22 minutes. Suddenly, I realized I had made a mistake trying to keep up with this pace group – it was a long race ahead of us and I was already feeling a bit winded. I slowed down to a more relaxed pace, let the group fade into the distance, and just focused on getting my own rhythm.

That worked well for the next few miles. Davis Island is a fairly pleasant place to share with a few thousand other people before dawn on a Saturday. The next few miles ticked away, and by mile 5, I had clocked in at just over 56:00. I was feeling good, and looking forward to seeing my family who would be waiting for me once we got back off the island.

Around mile 6 we hit the bridge back to the mainland. I must have made some kind of noise reacting to the slope, because the fellow next to me thought I was complaining about the concrete. Not so – I train on plenty of sidewalks, but few hills. He was from upstate New York, he told me, and encouraged me to incorporate more hill training because it makes the flat parts seem much less difficult. (I have found a nice hilly area near St. Leo that I’ve run once and will do more of that in the future.) He sped away on the downhill, and I noticed he was wearing a “50 States Marathon Club” shirt.

Coming off the bridge, looping back past the eventual finish line to start Mile 7, we got to see the half-marathon winner – the improbably-named Richie Cunningham – coast to victory at 1:14. (He also won my age group – the Men’s 35-39.) I was still feeling pretty good at that point, looking for Dineen, Dad, and the boys by the road. I saw them – and the neon-green “Go Dad!” sign they had made during the wait – and pulled over for hugs, then took off again.

At Mile 8, the course curved around on to Bayshore Boulevard, and the discussion we had about hills suddenly became quite relevant. Not because Bayshore is hilly – it’s just a flat, wide, waterside avenue – but because that turn delivered me straight into the teeth of a forceful headwind that made it seem like I was climbing a steep hill. For most of mile 8, I had little choice but to walk, and made about as much speed as I would have running. The eventual marathon winner apparently lost about 10 minutes on his winning time from the previous year due to the windy conditions, so it was a real force to be reckoned with.

The wind, of course, was a harbinger of changing weather, and mile 9 brought cold, stinging rain but thankfully, less wind. I was able to pick up the pace quite a bit through here and made good time to the turn-around point in front of my old elementary school. At some point around there, I saw my neighbor Kyle (Sarah’s husband – he had run the 15K on Saturday) and got a high-five in passing.

The rain lightened up after the turnaround, and the wind was at my back now, so I was able to get back on a reasonable pace. At Mile 10, despite having walked much of Mile 8, I was only about 1:56 into the race – meaning I could still finish under 2:30 if I kept an 11-minute pace. The miles weren’t quite melting by, but my head was in just the right place – positive, feeling strong.

But fear shot through me a few minutes later – my calves began to twinge, threatening severe cramps. I slowed a bit, took a short walk break, and kept running. Everything seemed OK, and I was still on pace to beat 2:30.

Into Mile 11, the lead car for the marathon passed us, and the marathon leader with him. I joked to the woman next to me, “We’ve just been lapped!” She replied, “As long as I finish without needing medical attention, I’ll be happy.”

“Me, too,” I replied, and then let out a sharp yell. My calves had completely seized up and sent a stabbing pain through my body. I could barely move, let alone run. I stopped. Whoever that woman was, I feel bad for her now. She was clearly concerned when I cried out, and I can only image what kind of head games my sudden blowout played on her.

Of course, at that time, I had bigger problems. With just under two miles to go, my legs were frozen in agony. I tried relaxing the foot, and was rewarded with the kind of pain I would expect if I had detached the calf on one end, tied it to a tree, and kept walking. In a blind panic, I moved my foot all the way the other way, toes pointing up, and the pain gradually began to ease. After some trial and error, I realized I could walk without triggering more cramps as long as I kept my toes pointed up as far as I could. I walked for a bit.

With more trial and error, I developed a hobbling gait, toes pointed up and inwards, that allowed me to run in sort of stiff-kneed hop-shuffle. Every time I slipped out of that gait, more stabbing pain rewarded my lapse.

At this point, my goal of 2:30 was gone, and my only remaining goal was to cross the finish line under my own power – still within reach, unless the cramps totally shut me down. As I approached the 12 mile marker, I did not yet know what lay ahead of me that would dramatically change the end of my race.

Hobbling along, I heard a shout: “Mike!” I looked over, and my friend Andy was there. Andy had run his first marathon about a year before, and we sometimes trained together when schedules and injuries allowed.

Andy had secretly conspired with my wife that he would wait for me near the end of the race to cheer for me. And wow, did that work. Seeing a friendly face where I least expected it, someone who knew all too well what I was going through, sent a surge of relief through me. I told him about my calves, he offered advice and encouragement, and then ran ahead to get a couple of pictures.

Ah, vanity – the second factor that boosted me in that final mile. The course was suddenly crawling with photographers. These were pictures I knew I’d want to keep, so I broke out my best smile, kept trotting the best I could, and flashed the camera a thumbs-up. Then the next camera, then the next. I stopped counting miles and started measuring my progress in photographers.

Suddenly, the finish line was only yards away. My family was on the left, waving the sign they had made, and while I’d like to say I surged at that moment, the truth is that I simply didn’t quit – but that’s all I needed. Across the line, hands raised in triumph, I accepted a substitute medal (they ran out of the real ones) and a mylar wrap, and I had finished my first half-marathon, under my own power and on my own two feet. Chip time: 2:37:21.

A week later, I’m still sorting out my reactions to the race. They are uniformly positive, even though I missed my 2:30 goal. I know that I would have made that but for my cramps, and I’m pretty sure I could have avoided those had I trained a bit less timidly and put a few more miles in during the last weeks before the race. I knew going in that I’ve have to deal with the physical challenge of the race, but what has surpised me is how much progress I made in my head. During training, if something began to hurt, or if I ran into a problem of some kind, I was likely to just stop, because I didn’t want to injure myself and jeopardize the race. During the race, quitting wasn’t an option – I either had to fix the problem or fail. And with the pressure on, I found myself fixing problems as they cropped up – most notably, how to finish without the cooperation of my calves. The other mental block that fell away for me was the tedium that long runs usually bring. In the race setting, each mile marker was more of a data point – calculating my pace and goal time – where a mile marker in training brought up thoughts of slugging it out for the remaining distance. The miles in the race didn’t feel especially significant – passing mile 11, breaking into “never gone here before territory,” I didn’t even reflect on it, focused completely on the finish line. And in the days since the race, I still perceive distance differently than I did before – less of a burden than a waypoint on the ultimate path.

And now, I’m looking forward to my next race.

Back At It

A Good Start and a Frustrating Stop

After a seemingly strong start, and then a bit of a setback, I’ve been pounding pavement again. July and August were a bit frustrating, but on Labor Day I was able to run the Nike+ 10K (on a treadmill, on vacation, but I did it.) Ten kilometers – just over six miles – is the longest distance I had ever run, and one that I hadn’t touched since high school. Unfortunately, after that, I found myself unable to run more than a once or twice a month.

Tempus Fugit

Around Thanksgiving, I realized that my goal of running the half-marathon in the Gasparilla Classic would slip away if I didn’t start training in earnest. And so I did. I learned the importance of weather, as my runs in the cool fall and winter air felt easier, faster, and longer than those of the brutal summer. The calendar told me I had only a few short weeks to add to my long run before March 1. Adding a mile per week – ambitious, but not crazy – would put me where I needed to be.

Longest Run Ever

Last night, driving home, I felt good and the weather felt cool. Almost on the spur of the moment, I decided to skip my planned six-mile run (postponed from Sunday due to the holiday) and go straight to seven. There’s a straight shot from my house to a nearby car dealership and back that’s exactly seven miles, a route I’d measured before but never actually run, and as I drove home, rock music blasting from my iPod, I decided to give it a shot.

I made it.

The run was challenging without being too punishing. I tried to keep a slow, steady pace throughout, figuring that was my best shot at avoiding a flameout after mile four. A bit to my surprise, the third mile was the hardest – that’s when my calves and quads hurt the most, when my energy level seemed lowest, when I seriously began to wonder if I hadn’t made a colossal mistake. Then just after finishing that third mile, I rounded a curve and saw the lights of the car dealership in the distance. The pavement slid quickly under me as I reached the halfway point… and then, I was just going home.

A Personal Best

Just a year ago, if you had told me I would be running seven miles before 2008 closed, I would have laughed, or at least rolled my eyes. Not only had I never done it, I had no reason to think that I even had it in me to try.

Now? I’ve checked off that box, well on my way to my goal of 13.1 on March 1. And in the process, I’ve achieved something that I had never been able to accomplish in my entire life.

If you’ve been waiting with bated breath for my next running report, you’ve probably been sadly disappointed. Then again, if you cared that much about it, then odds are you’re already one of the people who knows I’ve been nursing a leg injury these last several weeks.

Warming up for my last race, on May 17, I felt a fairly significant strain where I had been feeling a twinge just before – around the top of my left thigh. Foolishly, I ignored it, and went out and ran a 5K personal record ending in a sprinting contest between me and some 12-year-old. Ever since then, hip flexors on my left have been extremely sore, stopping me from running altogether at one point.

The last six weeks have been extremely frustrating. I tried to restrict myself to slow runs for short distances but even that was a hit-or-miss proposition, and once had me giving up just a quarter of the way into a slow three-miler because I just didn’t want to force something that wasn’t working.

I’ve tried a couple of things since then – I got myself some new shoes, (Nike Air Zoom Structure Triax+ 11), medicated per doctor’s orders, and kept running short and slow. I could feel my quads objecting as both my legs compensated for the shortcomings of the left one.

This weekend, I think I’ve finally broken through. Early Friday afternoon I went for a three miler. And besides the trouble one would expect from running at one in the afternoon on the Fourth of July in Florida, I had much less trouble than before. I made the entire three miles with only a short walk break, and after my initial warm-up, little pain. Then, yesterday evening, I went out and attempted four miles. Wow, was that hard compared to before. But not for the same reasons. Yes, my legs hurt, but not my hip flexors. Muscles were sore – quads, calves, groin, maybe a couple of other muscle groups I can’t recall. Apparently, I’ve adjusted my stride just enough to allow the flexors to recover while shifting the work to other, formerly underused muscles.

Muscles sore to getting worked -that I can deal with much better than the mind-trip of imagining connective tissue peeling away from my bones, like was happening in my head before. Sore muscles mean building strength – and I know I can do that.

So I’m back – not completely, but on the recovery path. I might still aim for a big race in October if I keep making progress. If not, I’ll definitely go for the half-marathon here in Tampa next March. Either way, it’s back to building my base. More miles, here I come.