30 miles

I hit it last week and training but before I blogged about it I wanted to back it up with another week.  It was a long, horrible summer of almost no running.  I ran something less than 150 miles from the beginning of May to the end of September.  It started with a sore hamstring that erupted a few weeks later into a sore right knee which eventually destroyed my right calf.

After the right calf fiasco the left calf started giving me trouble.  The rotation was a week off with swimming, biking and elliptic followed by a couple of runs and then boom.  It was the story of my summer.  It resulted in a weight gain of 17 pounds but it didn't come without some positives.

My right hip which has been a disaster for three years finally doesn't hurt all of the time.  When the hip problem started I lived with a burning sensation down the back of my right leg that took nearly six months to get under control.  From there it just went into a nagging pain that would ebb and flow in terms of serious pain.  The combination of the semi-enforced rest and some good chiropractor therapy from Dr. Ziggy gives me hope that hip replacement won't happen anytime soon. 

I capped a pretty good October of training this morning by going on my first 10 mile run in more than five months.  It was the slowest 10 I've ever run in my life.  But it's a start.  I don't foresee any racing for at least another month.  A Thanksgiving Day 5K may be in the offing, but only if I can get my training runs in a consistent 9 minute pace and that doesn't seem likely.  Racing by January seems more realistic.  I fear unless I lose 10 pounds, running any times remotely in the range I managed last spring is going to be tough.

But I'm back in the game baby.  I love it that I'm logging miles of trials and trials of miles.  And my streak of hitting at least 1,000 miles for the last 41 years should remain alive.