IT Blues

I tried running this morning, and the positive thing was that I actually got out of bed to go run in the cold, something I have been having trouble with this week generally (the getting out of bed part), but the negative is that I made it about 12 minutes and my IT band started to hurt. It had been feeling really good this past week and I had been stretching and using my foam roller so I thought a short run would be ok. Apparently, not so much. So I walked back home, thus my 12+ minute mile average. If you think it's cold running in the mornings, it's even colder when you run one way, get warmed up and sweaty, and then walk back, slowly, into the wind.

I'm trying to avoid thinking of worst-case scenarios. Plenty of people have come back from IT band injuries, so I'm sure it will just take more rest and stretching on my part. Maybe this is good for me because despite my recent announcement that I really am a runner, running and I have had a strained relationship these past few months, so maybe I needed an injury to realize just how hard it would be to live without it. Lesson learned! Now let me heal!

As for training, I guess I will continue to focus on the biking and swimming. The race is still nearly six months away and it only takes 12-16 weeks to be fairly well trained for a half marathon as long as you are not starting as a total beginner. I'll lay off the running for a bit and try to throw in some more gym classes to keep from losing too much cardiovascular fitness and do as much on the bike as I can. I know one of the marathon moms was forced to stop running for several weeks during the peak of her marathon training and she kept fit on the bike and still had an awesome race.

In other news, I am still not a morning exerciser. I always think that magically one day I will bound out of bed at 5am and embrace the gym, but alas, it has not happened. The last few years, where nearly all my running has occurred, I've been a student and so I either ran in the middle of the day or late at night. Next week I'm going to shoot for one morning workout and at least one post-work gym class. Now that I have the bike trainer, I mostly just want to come home and use that all the time because it is convenient, but I know I don't push myself hard enough on it. Probably half my training hours will still come on the weekends, but as the training increases I know I will have to fit more into the week, so it will be good to practice doing that now.