Pain in my butt!

So this is a new one.....Saturday's long run was literally a pain in the butt. Well, just the left side :)

To back up, I met John, Paul, Janette, and Dave (a new runner friend that was on Team BMC 2006) at Marathon Sports early Saturday morning for a run. They are all training for the Run to Remember Half Marathon the same day as my marathon. We ran and chatted the whole 12.6 miles....it was great to run with a big group again! Although most people don't consider a 12 mile run at 8am on a Saturday morning fun, but we really had a great time! I was planning to run 16 miles so I tacked on a couple extra on my own after they finished.

Overall I felt pretty good.....everywhere except my left side. My left butt was really tight for some reason.....never felt that before. Also, my calf and shin were a little tight....they are all connected somehow so I'm not surprised everything felt a little off. Miss Yoga Teacher Extraordinaire Janette thought it was my hamstring insertion point which makes sense because my hammys have been pretty tight lately. She gave me some stretches and pointers that seem to be helping. She told me what would be the best is to have Bryan massage my butt.....let's see if he goes for that one :) I'm thinking I stretched it a little too aggressively in yoga class on Friday night and that's what caused the tightness.....I've been icing, stretching, and foam rolling it and its feeling better today.

My two goals for the next two weeks before VT City are to (1) listen to my body and not push it too much and (2) get at least 8 hours of sleep each night between now and the race. I accomplished #1 today by stopping my run early because my left shin was really sore......I'm trying not to worry about it yet as its not bad and I have a massage scheduled for Thursday which should loosen everything up. Now I have to head to bed to accomplish #2!