Never Will I Break

I woke up today and my hip was feeling fairly good. Definitely not perfect, but not horrible either. I spent 90 minutes on the exercise bike, as promised. I mostly just spaced out for the majority of the time listening to music, but one song stuck out to me: Three Doors Down -- Never Will I Break. Part of the chorus is "At least a million times have I fallen, but never will I break," and it really stuck with me!

I did a little thinking during the ride too, about how I might do things with my racing once my hip is back in working order. Maybe I'm setting myself up for a let down, but I'm continuing to be optimistic. Regardless, with a four week taper I obviously won't be in the best shape to race come October 7th. I will lose a little bit of my fitness this month no matter how many miles I put in on that exercise bike.

The idea I'm currently flirting with is to run fairly easy at Chicago. I'm thinking run 20 minutes slower than originally planned, to put me in range to qualify for Boston. This way, even if I have some lingering injuries after the race my plans won't be shot for the spring. After Chicago, I'm looking at recovering for a week, having one hard week of training, then a two week taper and running Marshall University Marathon on November 4th, and here I would go for my 2:50 marathon.

A lot has to go just right for this plan to happen, and I realize this. I need to get this hip functional in the next week or so, but I'm staying optimistic about it. I also need to make it through Chicago injury free, which could be iffy since my 24 mile run sidelined me for a short period. However, I have narrowed down the cause of my injury to my new shoes and a weak core. Hopefully by fixing the causes, the effect won't come back!

I hope everybody else has had a more exciting weekend than me (grading and doing homework)!

-Doug