Checking In

It's been a while since I updated my blog, which seems to be a common occurrence these days. It's definitely not due to the fact that nothing is going on. It's quite the opposite actually, both on the running front and life in general, but since this blog is primarily devoted to running, I'll stick to that, and I hope to do a better job of posting regularly again going forward.

In my last post six months ago I set some goals for 2018, and unfortunately here I am almost halfway through the year and not even close to being on track to meeting a single one of them. That's the pro and con of publicly stating goals. You have the accountability, but when you fail, it's visible for anyone who wants to see. So why am I so far away from where I wanted to be? Well, that would be due to injury, which is another common theme for me these days.

Training was going fairly well in Jan and Feb, but I felt like I was struggling in my workouts. It was odd, because I was able to do my very first workout, a 2 mile steady state, at around 6:10 pace, which I felt pretty good about considering it had been a couple months since I'd run hard. However, six weeks later, I was still running that same pace (albeit for farther distances) and just didn't seem to be able to get any faster. That being the case, I decided maybe I needed to work a little on my basic speed, so I decided to implement some things designed to improve that area. I added one day a week of 4 fairly hard strides at the end of an easy run, two days a week of doing drills after an easy run, and one day a week where I made the workout some short, turnover-based intervals. I didn't feel like I went crazy with any of this. In other words, it's not like I went out and did 16X200 meters all out for my first workout. I eased into everything, even the drills.

Despite this, after the first couple weeks with the new additions in my training, I started to have some pain in my right hip. At first it was just a little annoying and went away as I warmed up, so I didn't think much of it. I did all the normal treatments for that type of thing and hoped it would go away as quickly as it came on. However, as seems to be the case more often than not with me, especially now that I'm older, it's rare that any injury is a minor one. Before long, the pain was bad enough that I fell into a pattern of running a few days then taking a day or two off. Furthermore, the pain started to migrate from my hip to my upper hamstring, an area I've experienced issues with in the past.

Fast forward to now, and I'm still not quite 100% but finally getting close. Furthermore, I feel like I may have a better grasp on the root cause of the problem and therefore I can address it. I'm optimistic that I can start making some progress, but I have a LONG way to go. While I've been able to run fairly consistently over the past 3 months, I've been limited in how far I can run and haven't been able to do any faster-paced running whatsoever. Needless to say, my fitness is poor, and rebuilding it during the heat and humidity of the summer is not going to be easy.

In the way of some exciting news, I'm happy to announce that I have been chosen as an ambassador for the LewisGale Salem Half Marathon, Virginia's Blue Ridge 8K & G&H Contracting Kids Run coming up this October 13th. I ran the 8k last fall, and from the race organization, to the course, to the awards and post-race celebration, can honestly say it's a great event. I'll be posting more about the race, as well as my training for the event, and encourage everyone to put this one on your fall schedule. If you'd like to register, visit this link and be sure to use my discount code of AmbassadorSTEVE20 for 20% off the registration fee. Also, I'll be giving away a free entry to the race, so stay tuned for more info on that. Hope to see you out there come October!