A new week, and a new set of sore muscles, this time it being my lower right leg. I’ve narrowed it down to my tibialis anterior tendon, which runs along the front of the calf muscle .. for whatever reason, when I headed out yesterday it was just real sore. Again, the good part is that I didn’t feel any sharp pain or anything, it just started getting sore. It did get progressively worse throughout the run (although I only did 7 miles), it was real sore afterward. I’m thinking its tendonitis. Its a good thing that I have today off from running, for multiple reasons.. first I can rest my leg, and second because its 78 degrees right now (yep, at 5:40am). Thats warm in my mind, especially since the sun isn’t even up yet.

So yet another overuse injury, first the calves, then the knees, and now my shins .. thankfully we’re coming down to the end of the hard training period so the miles start to get cut back. I need to get in a good long run tomorrow and next Thursday before I start to taper it back a bit for the first marathon of the season.

I calculated out that i’m just 7 weeks out from the Baltimore Running Festival.. and 13 weeks out from the Philadelphia Marathon .. so we’re starting to wind down the training season already. At least 3 of those 13 weeks are taper weeks (prior to a marathon), so it sounds like more than it actually is, I guess its time to start assessing how I think i’ll do this fall… well, I’m not hopeful that i’ll PR at this point in any of the marathons. The Lehigh Valley Health Network marathon is my best chance to PR, although based on my current performance and times, i’m not feeling that this will happen .. Baltimore is a little more hilly which won’t help my chances, and then Philly being so late in the season (and in the colder time of year), I can’t see me doing a PR there just because of those factors. My goal is really just to enjoy myself and finish .. i’m getting out of this whole “gotta break a record” thing, realizing that I generally set myself up to fail doing that.

Well, off to rest my leg and prepare for a good long run tomorrow. There is the possibility of rain and thunderstorms, which is okay in my mind for a long run. Anything to keep it cool!