The Tough Decision

It was early November when I injured myself. It would be another couple weeks of recovery, Thanksgiving vacation, and some self-evaluation until I would decide not to run the marathon I set out to train for. Lindsey and I had both set our sites on a marathon in February in California to get a brief reprieve from the chilly rain of Oregon. I was aiming for a 2:35 finishing time, trying to get an “elite” spot in the race. It would be my first full marathon but I had high hopes for what I might be able to achieve. I felt my training had been going well. I had completed another solid threshold workout (20 minutes, 4 minutes recovery, 15 minutes) but upon my arrival home I had some very uncomfortable stiffness and some sharp pain in my hip. Much to my dismay, it did not go away to following day. This would eventually lead me to going to PT for further analysis and recommendations. After several PT sessions and daily hip strengthening exercises I still was not able to make a quick return to the roads. While it was only December at this point, and there was still roughly 8 weeks until the marathon, I decided that the smart move for me would be to drop that race from my schedule and focus on cross-training and base-building for my triathlon season. I knew I would be prone to further injury by overtraining, trying to make up for lost time if I was to continue training for the marathon. It wasn’t an easy decision, but with that many more years of experience since my college days I knew what the smart move would be for the long term, season goals and I committed to it before I could change my mind.

Training Plan 2.0

The last week in December I started creating the framework for my triathlon season training plan. The early base phase would be almost exclusively swimming and biking. Not only because those are more of a weakness for me, but because I couldn’t run much anyway so it all worked out anyway. After my first half ironman distance race last season, I opted to put two on my calendar for this year. I wanted to have a more structured approach to my cycling training, in the hopes of taking off as many minutes as I could of that 50+ mile section. This meant 4 days a week of cycling and 3 days of swimming. My plan was to maintain that structure until our “racecation” down to California for Lindsey’s race. It was going to cost too much to bring my bike with us and the Pacific Ocean is chilly enough that swimming would be mostly off the table, even with a wetsuit. That would mean more running.

Shake Out

I plan to re-introduce some light running into my workouts the two weeks leading up to our trip to get my body ready for some light effort, but decent mileage, running while in sunny California. My strength exercises seem to be helping based on the few runs I’ve done between December and now, including my New Year’s Day run. Since I’ll be able to run it means I will be able to hit as many cheering sections as I can to see Lindsey chase down a new marathon PR!

When In Rome

Even though I wouldn’t be able to race I wouldn’t let that stop me from still enjoying our trip. Our race is only a few miles from the land of Disney. Lindsey loves all things Disney and we plan to visit Disneyland for three days after her race. Both as a way to celebrate and relax before returning to Oregon. More to come on the marathon and Disneyland in part 2.