About 3 days a week I'm doing something on the bike, and I'll usually throw a half hour or so in the pool so I'm not slacking on my workouts. Today was a good appointment with the doctor, she now says I can stand up in the saddle, I have definitely listened to what she had said, and two more weeks and I'll be back there for some more xrays to make sure that all is healing good.
Back to this weekend. This was supposed to be me hitting the road with Jen A and hopefully being with her and able to see her hit 3:40 and also help me set a PR and bringing me closer to getting closer and closer to hitting my goal of 3:30 by the end of this year......and then the injury came.
This weekend is instead me on the sidelines as a supporter - something I haven't done in almost 2 years. It's gonna be hard not to be out on the course, especially given that two of my close friends, who got me into the marathon thing in the first place, will both be running for their own PR performances. Ben (middle) and Jason (left) will both be looking to go sub-3 (Ben ran chicago in 3:07, jason did Chicago Lakeshore - the correct distance - in 3:03), and I get hopefully to see it happen. I'd be ecstatic to be able to witness the two of them achieving this, and I hope both of them can do it. The hardest part is that training with the two of them is so hard for me, since they have been running together since Cross Country and Track in High School, and are at a pretty high level as runners.
I am so envious of Ben and Jason - a tempo run for me with Jason usually results in an easy run for him and a killer (but great) one for me. His 7:30 pace definitely helped push me this winter/spring. I always think I can catch up to them, but I think I lost sight of how the progression as a runner should be a lot slower than I tried to take it this year. I was trying to get to 3:30 by the end of this year and am not so sure I can make that - but the training season has yet to begin and there will be almost 5 months til my fall marathon (NYC!) of which I will try and make an assault to shave at least 15-20 minutes off my 2007 time. If I can do better, great, but I have to stick to the goal of having running as a PART of my life, not my life being running.
Seems like that was the problem, and the thought that if PR after PR with no time to let my body recover would help somehow, was pretty dumb. The worst part is that I see more than a few people on our team with the same mentality that I have. One member especially, it gets under my skin how proud he is that he's got metal on his legs, I can't fathom why you would keep pushing your body THAT far through that much pain just so you have to spend some more time in a cast or have more surgeries, it just sounds dumb to me.....but it isn't my body and if thats what he wants to do, thats what he can do.
So I'll be on the sidelines with Kelly and Jessica (Ben and Jason's wives) on this sunday to see some personal history hopefully being set for the two people who got me to become a committed runner, along with seeing Jen A hopefully get her goal too.
Jason has said many a time that I have a BQ in me, it just takes time to build up to it. It took him 8 years of running to hit it, so I should have a little more patience. Maybe I will, but I'm green with envy that the three of them get to hit the course this weekend and show the NJ marathon what they've got.
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