I’m about five weeks out from Grandma’s and training is going well, despite really not committing to any kind of schedule through winter. My longest run so far has been twelve miles and I’m mixing some shorter runs in during the week and haven’t felt anything that seems like I might run into trouble like with Chicago in 2015.
The story with that is during my second longest run (18 miles) at about 16 miles in I started to get some really bad pain in my right IT band. At that point I was about three weeks away from Chicago and I wasn’t sure if I had enough time to get rid of it or even how to really go about it.
I’d run into IT band pain before and it was on my left side, during my first half marathon. It freaked me out then but I stopped running for awhile after and didn’t have any issues with that side ever again. With the training run for Chicago, it wasn’t as scary but made me nervous that it was going to affect the race, and it did. About mile 18 I got that hard ice pick in the side of the knee feeling that’s just so much fun to race with. From there on, it was a walk/run race to the finish. SUPER annoying.
Right or wrong, I’m keeping my mileage low for Grandma’s in the hope that paring it with strength training I’ll be able to run at a decent pace without something bugging me. Then I’ll try for a good time at Chicago, which will determine whether or not I’ll even run any more marathons. Having only run one I’m not sure if my body can handle it at a pace I’d like to run one at.