T-2 Weeks

My marathon will be over 14 days from now. (One way or another!) I went running on Tuesday evening, just 5k on a fairly flat surface, and my leg in the IT strap did pretty well, but my other leg hurt for a day or two afterwards. I went to the local running shop today and they were sold out of straps (it's marathon season, and every runner in town is injured) but I'm fairly certain I'm going to need a strap on each leg. With the straps, I think I can just manage to finish, but the time isn't going to be anywhere near what I hoped, I fear! They pack up the water stations if you average longer than a 16-minute mile. I've never been that slow, but we'll see!

At the running shop they showed me some more stretches and some strengthening exercises and told me absolutely NO downhills in the next two weeks! Otherwise they approved of what I've been doing. I went to the gym then and did 7 "miles" on the elliptical in about the same time I would take to run 7 miles (when I'm not injured, anyway). I had no knee problems and my quads got good and tired but nothing outrageous, so I don't think I've lost too much conditioning. My heart rate and sweat felt more like running than the pool jogging does, so I should probably be doing workouts like this as much as the swimming ones. I'm worrying about next weekend, though; I'll be in Alabama from Wednesday until Sunday, so it's running or nothing. Or driving an hour to find a gym where there's an elliptical I can use. If I can get another strap before we go (I'll try the big chain stores tomorrow, and if that fails I may pay for shipping to get it in time -- or maybe I should look at the stores in AL?) I'll try running, but I'll have to go about a mile from the house to get to the flat part of the road, and that means mostly running where the scary dog lives. :-(