The last time I updated my marathon training, things were going great. I had steadily increased my mileage, and by the end of January did my first half-marathon long run. Unfortunately, I pulled a muscle in my right leg in the process. Specifically, I pulled my sartorius near its insertion at the pes anserinus (as I tell my students each year, knowing anatomy is actually quite empowering).
This is a complicated anatomical region because in addition to the sartorius (which is an external rotator of the hip), the gracilis (which runs along the midline of the thigh) and the semitendinosus (part of the hamstring group of muscles). What it meant for me is that I had to stop running. So I took four weeks off from running, and instead tried to supplement my exercise with increased time in the pool. My steady uptick in mileage fell back to my pre-training baseline levels.
After four weeks, I tried to run again. Nope. Immediate sharp discomfort on the medial side of my right knee. So I took another week off and tried again. Nope. Better…but not good enough. So I took another week off. At this point I was starting to get nervous. I had fallen way off my prescribed training schedule and was now only about 6 weeks away from the marathon itself. But I was able to start running again. I wouldn’t say I was (or am) 100%, but I can run without feeling like I am doing damage to myself. It takes me awhile to warm up, but I have been able to hope back into a regimen and ramped it up to a 16-mile run this past weekend. I’m hoping to get in one more long run this week or early next of 20-21 miles, but even if that doesn’t happen, I feel I have at least put myself in a position to run the marathon successfully.
So…2.5 weeks to go for the marathon!
Science for Running: Running for Science
I added four more episodes to the podcast series last week (https://soundcloud.com/running4science/sets/running-for-science-science), featuring some great conversations with Kevin Hatala, Maria Fox, Habiba Chirchir, and Adam Foster. I’ll have blogposts up for those episodes later this week. I’ll be adding two more episodes each of the next two weeks, featuring some amazing anthro-folks (Cara Ocobock, Dave Raichlen, Natasha Mazumdar, and Herman Pontzer). Keep an eye out for those!
Finally, if you feel like supporting my run and specifically, supporting the Museum of Science and its traveling science programs, consider giving!
Thanks for this. Cursorial mammals are not plantigrade, IOW, humans are not “born to run” in the first place: we are secondary runners, we evolved frequent running relatively recently. For a biological update of ape and human locomotion (comparative anatomy), google e.g. “Pleistocene coastal dispersal 2019 Verhaegen”.