With every day that I continue to run while my back and hips are both sore and in pain, is making me think how difficult its going to be for the next 24 days. Yep, 24 days until the last marathon, worse yet, I have the Run for the Diamonds on Thanksgiving day just 4 days later … luckily thats just a 9 miler.

Its kind of weird how this back pain issue plays out though … I wake up in the morning, its usually a little stiff, but no pain. I go out and run, with generally no discomfort at all and then shortly after I get home, it starts to cramp up and get tight, thats when the pain really starts. I suffer for about an hour or two with pain that comes and goes and then it just goes away. It just makes no sense. Its been over 2 weeks now that i’ve had some discomfort, so my guess is that its not going away anytime soon… I better learn to suck it up. Some people have told me just to bag the last marathon and get better … but I really have a lot of time and money invested in this marathon already, so even if I don’t do great, I want to finish it.

Thankfully I am off tomorrow from running and expect to get at least 20 miles in on Saturday, and depending on if i’m crippled up or not from that run, do another 10 or so on Sunday… I intend to cut the miles back a little more during the week in the hopes of holding off anymore additional pain if I can.

I never thought I would say that i’m happy that training is just about over for now. Since I plan on doing the Ocean Drive marathon in late March, i’ll need to get back to training by the end of December to get in decent enough shape to finish that. That gives me about 5 weeks of recovery.. during which I’ll continue with the chiropractor (to heal this back up) and go for what I call ‘the 2000 mile checkup’. It’ll also give me a chance to catch up on my sleep and get over my fall allergies, i’m beaten up bad, I need the rest.

So enough complaining .. all the marathon post-race reports from MCM and other marathons that I had friends running in is what is keeping me motivated. I think Philly is one of the LAST marathons out there for the fall in the northeast (or at least the last real big one) … I just have to hang in there I guess, its almost marathon time again!