First running injury

I was right. This whole marathon business is going to be one challenge after an other. This weekend, my long run was fantastic. I'm doing now 17k once a week and 2 smaller runs of 5-7k. Saturday was a perfect day for running, the sun was shining and the breeze was cool. I felt great, really strong in the first half of the run. I am just loving my new shoes, they are making such a difference in my comfort and stability. Also, I'm really starting to see the progress in myself now. It's automatic now when I head out to run that I am trying to run stronger and make some progress in each and every run. Now, during my 5k short runs, I'm expecting to be beating my time from the last run and I'm finding it much easier to push myself. I'm finding it much easier I think because the rewards are much greater. When I started running this 5K route a few months ago, it was my long run. I remember being happy with a time of 43min. Now, I've watched my time go from 33min, to 31min, to 30:40 and this weekend I did 5K in 26min. That's incredibly encouraging. Thinking of those kinds of rewards helps me in my long runs. I keep thinking about how eventually I'll be running 30K on the weekends and thinking back to how challenging the 17K was, and how at that point, 17K will seem like a walk in the park.

But, of course, like I began saying, this is just going to be one challenge after another. I really pushed myself to finish my 17k strong and it looks like I may have injured my foot. Sunday I started to feel a bit of tension in the muscles underneath my right foot, it was kind of sore like a pulled muscle. Anyway, I figured, that like with any sore or pulled muscle, a balance of rest and some easy exercise just to stretch it out should do the trick. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case this time. It's been progressively worse since Sunday morning and as of today, I'm having a hard time just standing. A friend of mine told me it was a common runners' injury and that I need to take some time off. I'm taking it easy today, no running, going to the gym or much of anything else. Hopefully this is just a minor glitch in the program this week and all will be back to normal in a few days.

Until then.. I'll enjoy the rest I guess