A little honesty

Ok, it's time for a little honesty.  I haven't run in 8 weeks.  I blame the baby.

Such a happy girl!

Except, she isn't exactly a baby anymore.  Here's the thing.  Last year, a couple months after she was born, I started back running.  And almost immediately began experiencing extreme hip pain (reminiscent of a stress fracture I had in my hip six years ago).  I also started losing weight - which would be nice save for the fact that I was already at my pre-pregnancy weight and didn't have the extra lbs to lose.  And I started getting really grumpy.  That was probably due to the lack of sleep.

So I decided that the best thing for my body (and my family) was to stop running for the duration of the time I was nursing the baby.  That ended up being a full year.

And guess what? I loved it!  I started trying out some different forms of exercise that challenged my body and made me stronger (weight training, kickboxing, cardio conditioning to name a few).  And by the time I was ready to stop nursing, I was also ready to start running again.

Proof is in the Garmin

Long story short, I ended up running two fall marathons in which I PR-ed by 8 minutes and qualified for Boston in the first one, and ran as a pacer in the second one.

And then (here comes the part where I blame the baby), I decided to take the winter off.  It was so nice last year when I wasn't waking up at 4:30 a.m. to go run in the frigid temps and could snuggle in my bed until my kids started poking me in the eye and the baby screamed to be fed.  I figured that if I was able to take a whole year off and still meet all my goals this past marathon season, surely I can take the winter off and be okay.

It's been going along swimmingly until I realized that 1) I miss running and 2) I am supposed to run Boston in 14 weeks from today.

I guess I can't take the whole winter off.  And I guess I can't really blame the baby.  But I think I will for one more week!

Got any training tips for me??