oh god

In 2012 when someone told me "you should pay attention to that shin pain...don't run the 20 miler, you're good" I went ahead and ran it anyway. And within a day I knew it was a mistake...and attempted to recover by not running the remaining three weeks. My shin started hurting early in the race and I spent the rest of the race cursing the foiled ending to my PR-heavy training season.

This year, I've still struggled with shin stuff and have leaned heavily on a run/walk approach. My shins haven't hurt as much in September. A week ago from last Sunday I ran my scheduled 12 miler and felt pretty good. Run/walk, yes. But I noticed later in the day and the next day that I felt unusually sore for such a short distance (relatively speaking.) A week ago today I went to run 3 miles--admittedly after very little sleep, in the middle of the day and just generally not a good scene that I was working with--but EVERY STEP HURT. Knees. Shins. Everything. And I haven't run since.

I'm sure I'll be fine, but it's messing with my head a little bit.

(Psst! You haven't run for a WEEK. Internal side eye glance. Your knees hurt just walking down a set of stairs. Internal mouth-twist.)

I have to keep reminding myself that there really isn't any fitness level to be gained at this point. I keep reminding myself that this training season is over, what's done is done and there's nothing left to discuss about it.

Do I have a goal for the marathon? Well my run walking has been somewhere around a 12:30 to 13:00 on a good day. It would be great to stick with that. 13:00 is 5:40 finish time. If I'm feeling better than ever, maybe I'll be closer to 12:30. We shall see. I also have a goal of positive thinking. Might seem small to you, but it's huge for me and that ALONE will be a massive victory.