A Better Week – Cody

This has been a much better training week than the previous few. I'm still having some knee pain, but on Sunday I was able to do an eight-mile run with no pain at all and I felt like I could easily have kept going. I've been cross training and I've been going pretty aggressively after some lateral hip strengthening, which is where I think the root of the problem is. Unfortunately I don't have the time to build the necessary strength for this to not be a problem during the race, so it looks like I will just have to deal with it. That being said, I've decided to forgo the normal 20-mile effort that most fellow marathoners are doing right around this time. I'd rather go into the race with a less reactive knee than more miles under my belt. I'm confident in my current routine and how I've felt on previous long runs that I will finish. I just need to keep reminding myself that my goal is to finish, not to finish fast. The more I run long distances, the more I am convinced that I don't have the genetic gift of lots of slow twitch muscle fibers. I'm much better at running fast for a short period of time, but pushing something that doesn’t' feel very comfortable is part of the fun of the marathon for me. We'll see if I'll be calling it fun at mile 20 of 26, but right now I'm have a good time.