run a half marathon

I should quit putting things on my list that I’m “pretty sure” I’m going to accomplish “soon,” because plans change, situations change, my health changes, and suddenly my 43(ish) things start to look very outdated, and then I use this site less often.

Such is the case with this goal. I was all geared up to run the half-marathon: I ran a decent 10K in July, I had my training schedule up on the fridge, I was running with my sister on Sunday mornings, and I had achieved a pretty decent 10 miles… when 2004’s hip joint soreness returned, and then I had a doctor’s appointment during which more things about me got messed up rather than fixed, and then I had injuries on both my big toes. So the half-marathon’s in just a few days, and my health’s back up to par, but there’s no way I’m in shape to run 13 miles. Sigh. I haven’t run in so long, it’s going to take some work to accomplish a 5-mile run again.

Maybe next year for the half-marathon? At least keeping this goal on my list will remind me that eventually, I’ve got to do this.

Seeing as I still have well more than two months to go before the half-marathon, I’m being good to my body and taking a week off from all running. I have the same pain in my right hip joint as I did exactly one year ago. Last year, I ignored it and continued running for about an hour every evening after work… until the fine day that I realized I could barely move that leg, much less run on it. I wound up sitting on the couch for the better part of five days. I spent a lot of time reading Virginia Woolf’s The Waves out loud to myself and wondering whether I should go to the hospital. But I was in Japan at the time, and I knew that going to the hospital would be a daunting task. Going to the hospital I knew of would have required me to walk to the train station, go up the stairs, ride one stop, go down the stairs, walk several more blocks to the hospital, etc. It wasn’t worth the pain it would take to get there.

I’m not making the same mistake this year. The joint pain isn’t much right now—it comes and goes, and about half the day, I feel no pain at all. If it’s not completely gone after this week is out, I’ll see about going to a sports medicine specialist (seeing as I can drive to that kind of place now, and seeing as there won’t be a language barrier).

I really missed running this morning, though. It had been a while since I’d slept in until nine on a Sunday, had breakfast before leaving the house, and not deposited a set of sweaty running clothes on the bathroom floor around 11:30 AM. This, according to the Half-Marathon Training Schedule of DOOM, was an 11-mile day. Maybe I’ll catch up to that next week.

I’ve already committed to running the Atlanta Half-Marathon on Thanksgiving morning. The training for it hasn’t been too bad—moving from being able to run a decent 10K to a half-marathon is pretty reasonable. My sister and her boyfriend did it last year, and I was inspired to join the exhausting fun this year. There are three required runs a week in the training program the three of us are using: two shorter runs in the middle of the week (say, Tuesday and Thursday) and then a long run on the weekend. The long run gets progressively longer as the weeks go by. Right now, the Half-Marathon Training Schedule of DOOM that I hang on the fridge tells me that I should be running 10 miles this Sunday, and that I should have run 10 miles last Sunday.

And how have I been doing? Well, it’s been raining here a lot in Atlanta, and my usual weekend running trail has been completely flooded several times this summer. So I’ve missed two of those crucial long runs, and trying to make them up on a treadmill just wasn’t the same. Last Sunday, I did a decent 8 miles. This Sunday I’m aiming for 9. I’m not worried about being a bit behind the schedule. I’ve got three months to turn 8 miles into 13. Shouldn’t be too hard.