Back in March, I ran the Marine Corps 17.75K to earn myself a guaranteed entry in to this year's Marine Corps Marathon.

I was excited to finally be injury-free again and was looking forward to using the rest of the spring to build a base so I could roll in to marathon training this month feeling strong.



But my appendix had other ideas and it ruptured at the end of April. That landed me in emergency surgery, which was followed by a month-long recovery where any sort of workout was totally off the table. My fitness suffered horribly.

I attempted to rebuild some cardiovascular fitness in early June when I finally felt good enough to run again. It was slow and humbling, but it was something.

Then a few weeks later I got married and spent a week in the Dominican Republic -- marathon training and rebuilding my fitness base was the furthest thing from my mind.



But low and behold July arrived, and it was time to start marathon training.

I looked for super novice, incredibly beginner training plans. You're not supposed to go into marathon training with no running base and literally no endurance. But I didn't want to throw out my hopes of doing the marathon when I still had 17 or 18 weeks until the race.

So I picked a plan and started training a couple of weeks ago.

The three mile runs during the week went OK. Anything longer than that was a real struggle.

I'm sure the insane heat wave we've been having in DC hasn't been helping, but all of my runs have felt really hard. I did two of my long runs on the treadmill to escape the heat. The six mile one went OK. The seven mile run a week later felt like utter death. I had to walk most of the final three miles.



I was supposed to do nine miles this weekend, but I had some glute/IT band/knee issues crop up last week, so decided to skip it to nip any potential injuries in the bud early. I spent some time on my foam roller instead.

This doesn't seem like the most promising start to marathon training, and I'll be honest, I'm not sure this is going to be the year I'm able to run a marathon.

The MCM has an entry deferral program. It doesn't open until August, so I still have time to make a decision and see how things go.

My plan for now is to stick with the training plan for a few more weeks and see what happens. Maybe my fitness will come back faster than I hoped. Maybe this terrible heat will break, and I'll find that the heat was the real problem, not my lack of endurance.

But if not, I can always defer my entry and try again next year.