Screeching halt

This is gonna be a good news - bad news kind of post. The bad news comes first....and it's definitely not good.

Last Tuesday started out as an innocent day, and I ran an easy 7.5 miles. Nothing wrong, right? Well ever since that run ended, I have had a pain in my lower left hip and in my left butt. A couple of people (including two physical therapists) I talked to say that it's my gluteus medius that needs strengthening and a couple say my sciatic nerve might be pinched a little. Whatever it is, I don't think I'm gonna be able to run the half marathon on Sunday. And it's a bummer because I've really been looking forward to it...

So that's the bad news. Not much to it, that's all I gotta say about it. Another interesting thing that came up was my diet. A massage therapist I know was checking out my injury and she inquired about what I eat. From there she delineated that I'm not getting enough protein in my diet, and she advised me to buy a certain protein supplement. I was skeptical at first but then I went home and did "A day in the life of Justin" and realized that I usually only get about a third of the protein I should be getting. Her analogy was that her father wanted to build a log cabin a while ago, but he didn't have enough lumber to do it. Once he got what he needed, he was able to build it. Same goes for my gluteus medius....it's been underdeveloped this whole time and mostly because I haven't been taking in nearly enough protein. I thought it was interesting, and a bunch of the guys at work agree with it. So since last week I've been taking a closer look at my diet and trying to balance things out a little more.

Good news? MSU football is 4-0 after a 31-14 victory over Notre Dame! AND Notre Dame is 0-4 for the first time EVER! (Apologies to Jess). It's also the 6th straight game MSU has won in South Bend, which is a new record (USC had 5 in a row)...hence the picture. Late in the game with MSU leading 24-14, MSU had 4th and 2 from the Notre Dame 30 yard line and was going for it. As the ball was hiked, the QB Brian Hoyer looked like he fumbled the ball, and I was thinking "Crap...there goes that opportunity..." but then he recovered and threw a touchdown to the tight end. What I read in the paper the next day was interesting - it was a trick play. Hoyer meant to act like he fumbled the ball right after it was snapped so that it would confuse the defense. It's so convincing that it almost always gets our OWN defense in practice! So yea...I guess you might as well have fun when you're winning. Now the real test begins....Big Ten season. And the first game is at #9 Wisconsin on Saturday....time to man up!

Here's to keeping my fingers crossed for running this weekend. One of my co-workers brought up a point that I shouldn't run through because look what happened when I ran the marathon. 7 months down the drain. So don't worry, I'll be smart about it. It's just so frustrating because my training seemed to have been going well. But that's just how things go sometimes.