Overdue Injury Update

As I mentioned in my year-end recap, I am, once again, injured.  In an attempt to salvage this marathon training cycle, I took two weeks off to let my leg recover a bit before the training intensity really increases.  I was lucky that this two week break coincided with a trip home for the holidays, and another trip to visit one of my best friends.  The travel would have thrown off my schedule anyway, and hanging out with family and friends kept the lack of running from driving me totally crazy (although I think any of them will tell you that I'm a pain in the ass when I'm not running).  I already wrote a bit about what my running-related activities at home, so I'll skip to my East Coast adventures.

Last weekend I went to the Lower Hudson Valley area of New York to hang out with two of my very favorite runner girls, one of whom is now an instructor at USMA.  On Saturday morning we decided to get in a little workout by hiking up Bear Mountain.  Clearly a wonderful idea when just going up and down stairs too much makes your leg hurt like crazy.  Heidi asked if we minded taking the "slightly strenuous" route, since she's training for a 50 mile trail race through the same area.  Not wanting to sound like wimps, Diane and I quickly agreed.  About halfway up we realized that this "trail" actually involved several segments of steep rocks that required us to channel our inner spider monkeys.

Heidi and Diane contemplating part of the "trail" on the way up

But we eventually made it to the top, and getting this view of the Hudson Valley on a beautiful 50-degree January morning was totally worth it.

The view from the top

Then we hightailed it back down the mountain, going down a much easier trail that mostly involved stone steps cut into the side of the mountain.  We felt like total badasses as we passed all the tourists taking the easy way up.

Appalachian Trail on the way down

We rounded out the day with a tour of USMA, lunch at McDonalds, mani-pedis, a trip to the most amazing  bakery I've ever seen (there's wholesale area at the back of the bakery where you can wander around with a plastic glove and paper bag picking fresh-baked bread, rolls, and bagels off the racks), and a pasta dinner with plenty of wine.

Now that I'm back in Cambridge, I'm trying to get back into training while keeping this new injury under control.  I went to see my nurse practitioner yesterday, and she said there doesn't seem to be any structural damage to my knee, so all signs point to tendonitis.  She told me not to run if the pain gets too bad (which I heard as "run as much as you want as long as you can tolerate the pain") and referred me back to physical therapy.  I got an appointment for early next week, so until then I'm trying not to make things worse.

I've run for the past three days in a row with only a little pain, but after two weeks off I already feel pathetically out of shape.  I've been running with the new heart rate monitor I got for Christmas, and seeing how high my heart rate is at rather slow paces is pretty depressing.

Splits from Tuesday's run

Today the weather was disgusting, so I planned to give my leg a break by riding the stationary bike in the gym.  But around 3:30 the rain let up, and after two weeks off I couldn't pass up an opportunity to get outside for a run.  So I quickly strapped on all my reflective and/or light up running gear so that I wouldn't get hit by a car and headed outside.

Safety is much more fun with bright pink vizi-pro

Blinking red light on my back so I look like an airplane

Trusty headlamp from the Kilimanjaro expedition

Stylish reflective leg bands

Next up: revising my training plan.  I have nine weeks left until the race, but want to ease back into training instead of just picking up where I would have been without injury time off.

Any suggestions for making sure I get to D.C. in marathon shape?