Chicago Marathon(pre-race) Training Recap

Well, this was it. My one race for 2008. McNaughton, Ice Age, and Kettle were all skipped due to injuries and here I was on Michigan Avenue, as ready as ever to start the event I had been trainig for all year.


It had been quite a long ride, to say the least. I was so motivated for this race, but the training did not quite reflect it. My ITB injury from December carried well into the summer and did not fully heal until I started tapering for the race(3 weeks out). To add to the IT problems, my right knee caused a considerable amount of pain during the summer when I started increasing mileage. That was not too bad as it went away after a couple weeks, but running became quite frustrating.


Then came the shinsplints. This came up right after my best month of training~ 250 miles in July(during which I only took four days off completely from running). I was right on track for where I should have been for Chicago, but got completely screwed over by this. I took 5 days off to start August(more than all of July), but the shin pain continued to bother me until about 2 weeks before the marathon.


To cap things off, 10 days before the race, I did 8 mile repeats on the ISU track at sub 6 minute pace. The next couple days, my right IT band was flaming up, forcing me to take it back a bit and have just one more thing to worry about for the race.


All these injuries made training shaky, to say the least. I had a decent month in June and even better month of July. I only ran about 100 miles during all of August, but then laid it back on in September. I ran five 20 milers in September alone, 3 of which were in a period of seven days. I can't help but think that I may have overtrained for the race.


For Chicago, I did track work for the first time ever, although this may not have been such a good idea so close to the race. It was largely responsible for IT, knee, and shin problems(Wow! You think I should stay away from the track?).


I prefer having consistent months of training, but the way things are looking, this does not seem to be possible for me. Oh well, Chicago here I come!