Taper Time

Some of you may have read a post I had up here for an hour or two. I decided to delete it because moping around isn't my style.

I've decided my taper started last week. Running 20 miles next weekend is out of the question, so I'm looking at a four week taper now. Things can't always go as planned. I have 22 days to heal up to make it to the start line of Chicago, otherwise I won't make it to the finish.

Given the tone of this, you may have guessed my hip isn't doing too hot. You may have guessed right. I've been taking care of it all day and it still hurts, and I know running on it was a stupid thing to do; regardless of it feeling great before and during the run.

After finishing my grading for the day, I started looking at what the diagnosis could be. I don't think its tendinitis anymore; the two culprits are bursitis and inflamed fascia. Luckily, both of them have very similar treatments. Ice and drugs. One of them even has a quick fix which I'm going to look into next weekend. Bursitis can be healed very quickly with a steroid injection into the hip. It breaks things up and makes the hip happy again; so I'm hoping that will help! My dad (a doctor) is going to hook me up when I go home next weekend.

I'm going to switch my anti-inflammatory of choice from Tylenol to Aleve per my dad's suggestion. He told me to "blast it with two in the morning and two in the evening every day," and I think I will start doing just that! Update: I took some Aleve and its really doing the trick, I should have taken your advice a week ago, SLB! On top of that I need to keep icing and stretching it, but most importantly, I need to not run on it.

At this point I've done my moping and thats no fun, so now all my energy is going towards getting to the starting line.

By having this extended taper, I believe running a 2:50 will be out of the question. Pending on a whole slew of factors, my new goal will be either 3:00 or 3:10. Maybe I'll end up running with Nic, who knows. If running under 3 hours is going to jeopardize my running after the race, it can wait until later!

I'm determined to stay in good spirits despite this set back, sitting around feeling sorry for myself won't get me anywhere! I want to follow SLB's lead and stay on top of my recovery until I'm back on the road!