The Haunted Hustle half marathon was tougher than I had expected. I signed up for this one back in May because my friend Joe had told me it was a flat beautiful course through the woods. In August, they changed the course. Did you know there are hills in Middleton?
About two weeks before, I went to a good form running clinic at a local shoe store. I was tired of injuries from the half I've been doing and I didn't see how I'd be able to train and complete a marathon if injuries keep cropping up and keep me from running for a week or more. Hell, I'm starting to think about possibly completing an Iron Man someday. So my friend suggested I attend this clinic and figure out what some of the issues are. It was a 2 hour course that had a lot of information that I already knew, but the 15 minutes of information I didn't know were pretty valuable. I tried this out at my next run and I was a convert.
They warned us, however, that there will need to be some retraining of muscles since we haven't been using them. I had gotten up to 8 miles running this way, but nothing in the double digits. The 8 miles felt good, almost easy, so I figured 13 would be okay. Even for the Mini-Marathon in August, I'd similarly only gotten up to 8 miles the week before. What was perhaps a mistake was me going on a couple of long bike rides the week before. The weather was nice and I knew I didn't have many more opportunities for my bike, so I went out for a 16 mile ride. I should've worked up to 16 miles. My hip flexors were sore up until the day before the race.
