When I hurt my foot earlier this year, I got out of the habit of writing weekly recaps of my training for the Rock N Roll DC Half Marathon. There's not a whole lot to write about when you're stuck in a walking boot.

But since the boot came off a few weeks ago, I've been slowly and steadily building my running back up. It hasn't been easy, and I will admit, it's definitely disheartening to have my training be such a struggle these days after it started out so strong in early January.



But at this point, pending some sort of freak injury between now and race day, I will be able to run the half marathon. Judging by how my long runs have been going lately, I imagine the last four to five miles will be a challenge, and I'll probably be relying pretty heavily on my walk breaks, but I keep reminding myself that after my foot injury my goal was just to get myself to the start line -- anything after that was just icing on the cake.

And that I will be able to do.

Over the weekend, I did my longest run of this training cycle, a challenging 9 miles along the water. It was unusually warm for February so I ran in shorts and carried water, which I drained only slightly past the half way point of the run.



My leg muscles were the least sore the day after this long run than they have been in weeks, so I'm taking at as a hopeful sign. I also basically bathed them in Icy Hot post-run, which could have helped too.

I have one more long run of ten miles to do this weekend, and then I will have a week of taper leading up to race day. And then that will be that. I wish I were feeling a little more excited about the race, but maybe that will come next week, once all my training is officially in the books.