Well, almost.
I’ve spent the month and a half since my last post making regular visits to MIT Sports Medicine and the fantastic guys over at Sports and Physical Therapy Associates, and doing all sorts of creative and embarrassing stretches. It turns out that what I thought would be an injury for a week or maybe two… was actually going to be quite a long ordeal.
But I’m at least back to running a little bit. I can do about a mile a day right now – not because it hurts too much, but because I’ve been advised by my physical therapists to keep it limited to that. We’re working back up slowly, with the goal in mind of running those 26.2 miles on April 18. I think it’s fair to say that my new goal is to complete the marathon; I don’t think I’m going to be aiming for any specific time (except I need to beat 6 hours to get that sweet finisher’s medal.
But if long-distance running is something I’m going to keep doing for the rest of my life, it’s good that this happened to me now. It’s going to allow me to correct all the things I’ve been doing wrong, and really turn this into a lifetime sport. Some lessons learned:
- If it hurts, STOP. There’s no point in “pushing through the pain” unless you’re in the competition and everything depends on that last little bit.
- Don’t always run on the right side of the road. As it turns out, roads are banked and they destroy your legs if you always run on a surface sloped to one side.
- Stretching exercises are nearly as important as running. Really.
On an unrelated note, fundraising is going fantastic. Expect a post about that real soon.
