Week 17.5: Can I hold it together?

The past month of my training has been rough to say the least. I've been fighting injury after injury. Even after skipping all mid-week runs for two straight weeks, I'm not healed. And as I approach race day, I'm scared.

My shin is doing better for sure, and is probably the least of my worries right now. The compression sleeves I have work wonders and are very comfortable.

My knees are still achy. I don't think sitting at my desk for 10+ hours a day is helping right now but I don't have a choice. They have improved and I'm hopeful that they will make it through the run. I don't expect them to be pain-free on race day, but hopefully tolerable.

My adductor muscles are a concern for me. They've been aching for the past few weeks after runs, but are now starting to ache sooner and the pain seems to last longer after I stop running. It's simple overuse. I've been doing lots of stretching with the hopes that they'll ease up.

And now I have a new worry -- I have pain in the ball of my right foot, under my big toe. Online research suggests sesamoiditis, inflammation of the small bones down there. It used to only hurt on long runs and go away quickly, but now the ache is lingering.

I feel like everything is fighting against me, but I am too dedicated to this to quit now. I am coming to terms with the fact that this run may be painful for me, and internally deciding what my limits are. I've read that if the pain impacts your stride, you should stop. My plan right now is to shoot for the full, but judge how I'm feeling when I hit the point in the course where the half marathoners and full marathoners split. If I'm in too much pain at that point, I will stop at the half marathon so I can be proud to cross a finish line. If I decide to keep going, I'll take it easy on myself.

I deal with pain every day having fibromyalgia, so I'm OK with not feeling spectacular at the end. Everything will heal in time.

It's funny -- when I first signed up for this, I told myself that a half marathon would be a major accomplishment in itself. Now that I've spent all this time training for the full, I'm finding it hard to remember that. I consider it an accomplishment for others, but not myself. Being a competitive perfectionist does not make it easy to be OK with not reaching your goals!

My biggest fear, aside from injury, is that all the time I've had to take off may have made me lose too much of my fitness to complete the entire marathon. I know that tapering is important, but I've pretty much stopped running altogether, and I can't remember the last time I was able to complete a full week of runs. It's been months -- frustrating!

All I can do now is take care of my body and hope it decides to work with me come race day. I realized my mid-week runs are longer than usual this week, so I'm going to try multiple shorter runs instead to get the same overall weekly mileage with less repetitive stress (and stop altogether if I feel pain). I'm doing everything else I can to give my body lots of time to heal and prepare. I just hope it pays off.