Courage of Conviction

For those of you who are long time readers of this blog know, I am a distance runner, having run four marathons over the last four years.  This year I’m scheduled to run the Baltimore marathon on Oct. 13.  The past month I’ve been dealing with injury.  I haven’t been able to run more than two miles at a time.  What happened was the same thing that happened to me during the Marine Corp Marathon a couple of years ago - I stepped on something and twisted my ankle.  This caused severe pain in my hip this time.  Well, Over the last week and a half, I’ve been getting treatment from a massage therapist.  It is going very well.  On Friday I ran 4 miles before stopping because I was tight.  And this morning I ran about 7 miles before stopping, although I wanted to continue.  I feel ready to run the Harrisburg Half-Marathon next weekend.  I highly doubt I’ll break any records, even my own personal best - but that’s ok, that’s not why I am running it - it’s a good training run for the full marathon in Oct. 

The biggest surprise for me is muscle memory.  Here it has been about a month since I have been able to run past 2 miles and I have already run 11 miles in the last two days.  That’s amazing to me.  If muscle works that way, I’m sure that other areas of our body work in a similar fashion.