Nothing short of a miracle

Well...Michigan creamed MSU on Saturday, 31-13, to send MSU to 0-2 in the Big Ten and 3-3 overall. What got me upset was the stupid mistakes we made during the game (see 3 defensive offsides, 3 roughing/running into the kicker penalties, 1 late hit out of bounds, etc.) and the amount of dropped catches. Oh well...enough about that.

All during our pregame performance, there was this dull pain in my hip and it was worrying me because I didn't have any idea how I was going to run this morning. I also worried about it for pretty much the whole game...I know I'm lame, what else is new? I tried to massage it as much as I could during the game and afterward on the ride home, then gave it some ice when I got back to my place.

When I got up this morning, I had every intention of going out for a long run of 15-20 miles, so I planned it like I would even if the pain was there. I ate a good breakfast, iced the hip, and everything felt fine. Finally I got out there and started out on a 5 mile out-and-back course that would allow me to turn around if needed, or check how I'm doing at the 10 mile mark and determine whether or not to run some more. Everything was great until 2.5 miles in when my hip seemed to be flaring up. It was a dull pain and it seemed to be in one of my butt muscles, so I kept trucking figuring that the pain would go away. The episode of the Phedippidations podcast I was listening to was about mental toughness for runners, and soon after I started feeling pain they were talking about staying positive and running with good form. I thought about it for a second, did a little checklist of how my form should be, and realized that it wasn't very satisfactory at that moment. So I cleared it up, stopped thinking about my hip hurting, and soon enough the pain went away. Weird how that works, huh? I seemed to be a little excited too...I passed 5 miles in 36:01.

On the next 5 miles, I really started to come into my own and feel great, so I started thinking about how many more miles I would do after I did the first 10. I also took the time to reminisce on yesterday's game and remind myself of all the reasons I call myself a spartan. Though things may not go right so often on the football field, I'd much rather lose as a spartan than win as anybody else. Plain and simple. It may sound cheesy, but I wanted to add that in here.

I finished the second 5 miles in 35:30, a little faster than the first 5. Told you I was going quick, and I'm not sure why because it certainly didn't feel like I was going that fast. After that, I made the executive decision to do a different 4 mile out-and-back course. Or so I thought....I was skeptical about it when I was running it and realized that I accidentally cut some of the first part off, so it ended up being a total of an extra 7 miles. While running those last 7 miles, I was listening to the next episode of the Phedippidations podcast about University of Oregon coaching legend Bill Bowerman. One quote he had that I really like...

"I still bother with runners I call 'hamburgers'. They're never gonna run any record times, but they can fulfill their own potential." --Bill Bowerman

Sounds like me in the description of me in my profile! Anyway, everything felt fine through the rest of the run, the pain in the hip never came back. It seemed like nothing short of a miracle that I did 17 miles today, in 2 hours and 1 minute no less.

Tonight was the Playmakers race series awards banquet. I ended up finishing 2nd in my age group to my buddy BJ, so I'm ok with that. Afterwards, I got to chat it up with my friend Steve, a 37 year old runner who has only been running for about 6 years but already has a wealth of experience. He even runs sub-17 minute 5K's...we all joke with him that he had a mid-life crisis and running was his way out of it. We talked about our marathons coming up - he's doing Chicago in 2 weeks and I'm doing Detroit in 3 weeks. He ran Detroit last year and gave me some good tips about the course, but most of what he was emphasizing was to RUN MY OWN RACE. I don't think he could have stressed that enough. He said my line of thinking should be that many people may pass me in the beginning, but they're all hopped up on adrenaline and will crash in the middle of the race, and I'll pass them while running strong. He also told me to maintain my confidence and think of all the great runs I've had in my training, especially that 20 miler I did a couple weeks ago. All in all, he had some good things to say and I really absorbed every bit of it.

One more thing for everybody, I got this from my friend Megan, but it's a very inspiring running story from a middle school kid.

Whew, 3 weeks until the big day!