Marathon training - what's that?

I haven't posted my training weeks in a few weeks.. and that's because my training schedule has essentially blown up due to a nagging knee issue. It started whatever weekend it was that I painted my office (Week 12 of my marathon plan) - I took a misstep while running and twisted my left ankle on an uneven sidewalk during my weekly long run (it was a 12 miler - cutback week) at about 2 miles in.. I turned my large loop into a small loop intending to stop once I got back to my house (I have had many, many sprained ankles in my running days and essentially I am good to go the next day, sometimes even I can keep running on it if it's not too bad), but by the time I got back, my ankle was runnable so I kept going. By the end of the 12 miles, my right knee was feeling achy. No big deal, I figured it would just take Monday off and get back at it on Tuesday.

Wrong.

 Since then, I have had this niggle on and off, more on than off. It killed my long run the next weekend which was supposed to be 20. I did 9 on Saturday and then 10 on Sunday followed by an hour on the trainer. A lot of my midweek runs have also been replaced by trainer rides. After about a week and a half, I broke down and went to see Jennie Hansen (she's a physical therapist) and of course, runner's knee. She gave me some stretches and exercises to do to try to correct the problem in the future (tight quads, tight hip flexors - none of this is new information to me, nor is this a brand new injury that I've never had) but not much can be done now other than back off running and hope that my current fitness level can carry me through the marathon.

It was very upsetting at first. I have worked so hard and put in so much effort for this race. I executed workouts, ran in the morning, around my crazy work/school/life schedule. Did all of my long runs. Ran when I was out of town. You name it, I did it. Then this happened and threw my training plan into shambles.. which ultimately made me lose motivation. Who wants to be in the basement sweating on a trainer when they can be running outside? Not me.

I have been trying to power through and I had a bit of a breakthrough this weekend - I ran 15 miles on Monday with manageable pain levels. I was in Baltimore over the weekend for a wedding and did not have much success running - I ran Friday and Saturday with John but both days, my knee was unhappy which did not leave me feeling optimistic about trying a longer run on Monday, but I had to try. I am glad that I did it, and now I am taking it easy from here on out.

I hope that my pace goals are not ruined for the marathon but if they are, they are, and I definitely learned an important lesson.. that I need to not cross the 50 mile per week magic threshold! And that I need to do more preventative maintenance.

Anyways, just trying to make it through the race (it's in < 3 weeks) so that I can switch to cyclocross where there is no time goal and everyone is drunk anyways!

John and I on our run at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore

at the wedding!