Forward Motion

Today has been a good day. Life after a marathon can be like being a kid again, you learn how to do so many things all over, such as:

• Walking without a limp
  
• Picking things up off the floor
• Going down stairs
• Standing up without making foul noises

All of these were firsts for me today, and I feel like I'm making some serious progress!

I got a massage today, too, which was absolutely amazing. That lady worked some serious magic on my quads and hamstrings! So much magic, in fact, that I made it out for a run!

I headed out to a local running path at the Arboretum, which has a rather secluded 2 mile path with quite a bit of shade. I met Steph out there, to give her a chance to kick my butt, after I kicked hers last week. After getting moving, my legs felt pretty good. The downhills make my quads hurt like no other, but its manageable; they don't hurt nearly as badly as they did during the race, thats for sure. My legs feel worlds better after getting out there and shaking them loose.

As good as it felt, I'm definitely taking tomorrow off to let the healing continue. I might run Friday, and am definitely going to get out there on Saturday so I can share war stories with the group I did all my long runs with! I can't wait to here 'em!

I'm starting to try and plan out my upcoming races; you might have noticed I took that section down completely! Reason being Boston is a no go, and I realized I'm going home the weekend of the other one I had scheduled, blah!

The option of trying for another Boston Qualifier isn't completely out of the question, but its still a remote possibility. If I don't schedule one, I'm going to start focusing on speed for a little while. I'll put a few 5k's on the agenda this fall/winter, then really hammer on them early next year before my marathon training kicks off for a spring marathon; which is definitely happening, one way or another!

The one thing which everything depends on is this hip. If it heals up just fine, the odds of me trying to BQ this fall/winter increase drastically. Do I want it that bad? Yeah. I do want it that bad. But I'm going to keep you guys informed as to what I decide, so you can yell at me for being stupid if I am!

I hope everybody else's training/recovery is going well!

Happy running,

-Doug