I'll admit I've sort of fallen off the face of the earth lately. I've been busy dealing (and not very well) with a seemingly endless hip injury that has kept me off the roads for nearly a month now. It's been taking up a lot of my time between thinking about how miserable I am not running, going to physical therapy, and spending countless hours on indoor workout machines. But this past Saturday, while boring myself to death on the elliptical machine as my dear DFMC teammates enjoyed the bliss of a cool, crisp morning long run, I had a sudden realization about training and my state of injury. It is time to make a decision. If I'm going to do this, if I'm going to try and get myself better and try to run this marathon, I had better suck it up, stop wallowing in my body's inadequacies, and work my ass off for the next two months.

Now, this isn't exactly news to me. I knew what it would take to work hard through an injury and still run the marathon. I was so aware of what it would take, in fact, that I have always said that I would probably quit before doing such a thing. Clearly, I underestimated my own stubborness. Despite the fact that I have kept pushing on through my injury though, I honestly cannot say that I have been giving it my all. Physically I may have been pushing myself as much as possible, but I've been putting my body through the motions- my heart just hasn't been in it. Even though I've continued my training on the machines since my hip has become a problem, I have merely been putting in the time and logging the "miles." Sure, the time and the miles are important, but that's only half of the equation for running a marathon- in fact, for me, it's probably more like only 20% of the equation. Being a mental runner whose biggest opponent in running is my own head the vast majority of the time, the physical aspect of running has never really been my problem. That's not to say that I can go out and run any distance, any speed with ease (which is quite obviously not the case, even when I'm healthy) but I have learned that when my head and my heart are in it, my legs are nearly unstoppable.

In the past year I have continually pushed myself past what I thought my body was capable of. From the half marathon in New Bedford, to the marathon in April, to track workouts and races throughout the summer, my heart and my head have carried me faster and longer than I ever thought I could go. Now, in the face of injury, I need to push my heart and my head- to be smart, to not give up, to accept that not everyday and every workout is going to be perfect, to work hard, and most importantly, to believe that I can do this. On good days, it is relatively easy. On good days, I believe that I can train indoors, get my hip flexor to cooperate, and be out there on April 20 lined up to run 26.2 miles with 25,000 other crazy runners, confident that, while I may not have the best race of my life, I will finish. On bad days though, that all seems far fetched and... well, pretty impossible. On bad days, it makes me sick to my stomach to think that I will be sitting on the sidelines and watching as my friends experience that euphoria that only finishing a marathon can create, knowing that nothing but my own body held me back from that same elation. I know that if I have any hope at all of running in April, I have to put thoughts like that out of my head- they only obscure the view of my goal to get better and to run, and right now, my head needs no distraction from the task at hand. I certainly have my work cut out for me over these next two months, and I know that it won't be easy, but I think... no, I know, I'm ready to take on the challenge.

No matter how much work I do, how dedicated I am to physical therapy, how hard I push myself in training, there's still a chance that I may not be able to run in April- but I'll never know what I'm capable of unless I put everything I have into training for the next two months and give it a shot. My body has surprised me countless times before, and with my heart and my head pushing it along, who knows what it will be able to do this time. I certainly will never know unless I try.