A little cheese with that whine?

Well, I'm posting on a non-running day because I'm feeling cautiously optimistic that whatever is going on in my hips is going to pass, if not very soon, then upon the commencement of the taper after Sunday's final long, long run. I saw my massage therapist today, and while I had expected a veritable torture session, her ministrations hurt much less than I had anticipated. She kept asking me to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10, and it never really surpassed a 5-6. She worked my hips for an hour and I can't say if they're any better, but will see tomorrow whether they're any worse. On the pain threshold issue, I want to say tough break to my RW Marathon Training Forumite Amstelly, who ran through an undiagnosed femural stress fracture, and will now miss her spring marathon. You can feel her pain by clicking here. Against that backdrop, some sore hips aren't so bad. I'll stop whining . . . for now.

Need to rise by 4:30 tomorrow and run 10 miles before getting my wife & kids up for school. The nice thing about these early runs now is that it's dark when I leave, but light well before I finish, so it's a lot less bleak than the frigid, lightless winter runs through which I slogged for almost 3 months. We have a jam-packed weekend ahead (I just accidentally had typed "ham-packed" weekend, which would be an odd thing for a Jewish guy to have planned), so I will be running early on both Saturday and Sunday. Weather forecast looks good, though tomorrow morning will be near freezing when I go out the door. Unlikely to be good preparation for May 25th, so I'm going to overdress by design, just to keep the engine used to running warm. I'll do 5 easy miles on the trails on Saturday, and then the piece de resistance, the final 22-miler, run slowly but boosting pre-race confidence like no other workout. The main problem with running any long routes near home is that the choices are hilly, really hilly, and oh-sh*t-that's-hilly. My hips and the hills are not currently very amicable, so I'm not sure what to do. I could run an 11-mile loop twice, but just the thought of passing home at the half-way point is not very appealing.

In a perfect running world, I'd have followed my plan to drive up to Burlington on Sunday to run the last 22 miles of the marathon course, but the logistics are not cooperating. Problem is that 5 hours of driving and three hours of running equals an extra day away from the family. So, local it is, and if I have any energy left afterwards, I can hang out with my kids.

-ESG