WEEKLY SUMMARY (February 3-9): 43 miles (95% easy and 5% tempo paces)
  Sunday: 6 miles at 7:20/mi.
  Monday: off
  Tuesday: 7 miles at 7:20/mi.
  Wednesday: 2.5 E, 2 x 1 mile T @ 6:17/mi. (1 min.), 1.5 E (6 miles total)
  Thursday: 4 miles at 7:26/mi.
  Friday: 7 miles at 7:18/mi.
  Saturday: 13 miles at 7:21/mi.

Running has not been easy this week, but I think I am indeed on the road to recovery. With the help of the physical therapist whom I saw again on Thursday this week, I'm taking the long road to recovery that involves doing gradually more difficult exercises (in addition to running) to strengthen my weak and imbalanced hip muscles in hopes that whatever recovery ensues will not be short-lived. It now seems to me that the primary injury is to my right gluteus minimus and gluteus medius, with the TFL and psoas also affected. When I got acupuncture (for the first time) on Thursday, I realized that I had been unclear about exactly where the gluteus minimus is. It's one thing to look at it on an anatomy chart, to do stretches that target it, and so on. By when the PT delivered the charge to the needle that made my right gluteus minimus contract in isolation, it seemed to be at the very center of the pain and tightness that I've felt all through this injury. The more superficial gluteus medius attaches a bit higher on the iliac crest where I've had a pretty constant, dull pain since my 18-miler on 1/19. So it's clearly in a troubled state as well. But the deeper muscle seems to be the deeper problem, and the original pain that I felt several days before that 18-miler (but didn't worry much about) was lower and deeper at what I suspect may have been the lower insertion area of the gluteus minimus. So now I'm doing glute, hip abductor, and hip flexor exercises almost daily in order to bring those muscles back to life and to strengthen them all in a balanced way so that even the weakest of them (which is apparently my right gluteus minimus) can handle the running I do. I've slowed down my easy pace marginally this week in order to accomodate the extra stress of the exercises, but only slightly because the point is to get those muscles to cope by starting with very light exercises and gradually increasing the difficulty. At the same time, I'm trying to ease back into some harder runs. I did basically half of a tempo run on Wednesday and a medium-long run on Saturday that was almost twice as far as I'd run in the previous three weeks. My hip was ok during and after the mini-tempo, with only a little uncomfortable stretching in that area during the run that immediately went away when I stopped. But after Saturday's 13-miler there was some tightness and pain right where one would expect if the gluteus minimus is the main problem. I took ibuprofen and waited until this morning (Sunday) to stretch, and it seems fine. Next week I hope to continue on this trajectory. I'll still take things one day at a time, but I'm starting to think in weekly chunks again and hope to do a full 4 x 1 mile tempo run and another medium-distance run (maybe 11-12 miles this time) during this coming week while continuing daily exercises. If I run the 10k race next Sunday, then the best idea would probably be to treat it as a tempo run. The jury is still out on whether I'll be up for the marathon or half-marathon on March 16, which is only 5 weeks away. I won't run the marathon unless I can beat my current PR of 3:12, such as it is, but I'm not sold on whether I should run it even if I think I can run faster than that. At this point it doesn't really matter and wouldn't affect the sort of training runs I do, which are just aimed at nursing me back to general distance running health. By the way, when I was talking with the PT on Thursday it emerged that I had misunderstood one thing he said that I reported in my last post. The underlying lower back issues that he had in mind were effects of bad posture and nothing else. His point was that doing all these exercises and running with perfect form won't enable me to dodge injuries like this if I spend most of my waking life standing and sitting with bad posture. So trying to avoid that is the most important thing I can do.