Decisions.

Yesterday I had a good talk with my friend and running mentor (who is also a physician, incidentally) with regards to my current training schedule and how things have been going for me this time around.  He and I will be running the Ogden Marathon together, which gives me an additional motivation to do my best.  I've come to the realization that my body is trying to tell me to let up a little.  If I'm going to be able to run the remainder of my training long runs and make an improvement to my marathon time, I have to let my hip/ leg issues heal.  This week is a recovery week, so I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity to "rest" from running without feeling guilty about it.  My friend reminded me that I have plenty of training time left before the marathon, so I really need to let my body fully recover and heal.  I will still be doing some cross training workouts, and I also (finally) picked up a  foam roller so I can do some self-massage on my hamstrings and IT bands,etc.  Now I will keep my fingers crossed that taking this short break from the repetitiveness of running will be enough to give me a fresh start come next week.

So, with that said, this morning I did 35 minutes of Pilates, followed by 40 minutes on the elliptical.  I'll probably be using the elliptical a lot, because it is a good low-impact cardio workout.