Another Roadside Tragedy

Bad news on the injury front yesterday. Well, the good news first: Deb, who sprained her ankle three weeks ago and was sidelined for a couple of weeks without doing any running, ran 21 miles from Hopkinton to Boston College yesterday and felt pretty good doing it. As for me, I stopped running for a few days after my right Achilles tendon started really bothering during a run Tuesday morning. It had started to feel better the last few days, so I tried running an easy five miles yesterday, but I could feel it pulling almost immediately. I turned around at the two-mile mark and only made it another half mile before I had to stop because of the pain; had to walk the remaining 1.5 miles home. I was not happy at this turn of events. The most disheartening thing about the whole situation is the Achilles' feels a lot worse than the last time I had these problems. In the fall of '04, I could run with some tightness that would clear up after a while; now, I can't run at all. I guess I can point the finger at my increased mileage due to the Pfitzinger program I was on. I've got two months until my marathon, so all is not lost yet. But I'm going to have to shut it down for a few weeks and see if there's any improvement. Unfortunately, the last time I shut it down, it didn't seem to help, and that was with a less serious injury. All in all, it's pretty disheartening, especially after putting all the miles in already. But as I was telling Deb yesterday, maybe it's my body telling me I shouldn't be doing marathons. I remember thinking the same thing last fall when I was training for NYC and feeling crappy, but I never ran into anything close to this bad during the ramp-up for that race. Something to think about. If I can't run this race because of injury, I'm leaning towards never trying any marathons and just sticking to half-marathons and under. Hey, I've done five marathons and I broke four hours once. That's five more than I ever thought I'd do. I'd rather have those memories than keep getting injured every time I try to run another one. We shall see.

Do the humpty dance:

• Got together with OJ and Amy and two of their friends in Cambridge. We hit the Miracle of Science for a while and then headed over to the Abbey Lounge to see J. Mascis' new stoner rock band, Witch. Even saw Mascis sitting out front talking on his cell when we got there. Alas, as with most club shows, the scheduled start times were way off and we ended up leaving after 11 without even seeing Witch because Amy was pretty exhausted; frankly, I was, too. Normally, I would have stayed, but we had to get up at 5:30 a.m. to take Deb in to Boston for her run and I was already beat, so I was happy to get home by midnight. Good to hang out with those guys as always.
• The Leafs played their way out of the playoffs by getting smoked by Montreal back-to-back, UNH's men's and women's hockey teams both got bumped from the NCAAs, and my March Madness sheet is in a shambles. Ugh.