Sore abs... & 12 mile group run

I ran 12 miles at Saturday's group run.  I'm feeling pretty good about the fact that I'm basically up doing a half marathon distance in February and not feeling that bad or tired from a run of that length.  My hip is still giving me some grief, but I did a better job of caring for it in the aftermath of the run this weekend and it hurt much less afterward.  While the chiro had worked on my psoas muscle before, we discovered last week that the place at the front of my hip where my psoas muscle inserts or something is tight as hell; he touched it and I pretty much went through the ceiling.  So mid-run and after my run I stretched it a few times, and I iced it twice that day.  It actually seems to have helped.  And my IT band isn't bugging me like it was before.

The run on Saturday was a lot of fun.  Still no one showing up for the 10:30 pace group so I ran with the 11:00ers again (all the better for me--I like those folks).  We had a group of about 8 up until mile 3.5 when a bunch turned back and just left me and two others.  One of the people I was with is an ultrarunner and was in the process of doing a 40 mile training run; she'd been up since 3:30am running, so we spent miles 12-24 of her run with her.  It was a lot of fun... exchanging stories about races and other stuff.  I always really love running with the ultrarunner because she's so steady and relaxed and good-natured.  Also they had water out on the course for us so I didn't have to take my fuelbelt, which was awesome.  I tried a gu gel for the first time and was not really impressed (I'll stick with Clif, I think--Gu was really overly sweet).  Twelve miles was Sarah's longest run to date, and she also had her first gel ever (and her reaction to eating gel was priceless... heh).

So last week I didn't hit 27 miles as I'd hoped to but I was close.  This week I'm aiming for 25-30 again and then I think next week I start introducing speed work and ramping up to 40 miles a week in the very near future (eek.)

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I've been walking around with perpetually sore abs. They were sore after I did 5 miles Thursday night (that run was a nightmare btw... not enough sleep, not enough food all day, too much caffeine all day, and the usually "slow" group was cookin' along at a very much not-slow-for-me pace--we were running 9:30 for the first couple miles, and eventually I fell off the back of the pack and we were still doing 10:00 miles according to my garmin.  Anyway, I felt like complete crap... I think I was compensating by keeping my stomach muscles tight or something because MAN were they sore after that run...)  I can't wait until March when I'm done teaching at this terrible late afternoon time that messes up my ability to have anything resembling a healthy Thursday.

And my abs were even more sore after the 12 miles (maybe I was running funny? Or just that I haven't done runs that long in awhile? not sure).  The chiro has me doing side planks and these other back exercises daily, and I've missed a couple days because my abs are so sore.  I also recently got a door gym and I've been trying to do negative pullups in preparation for doing real pullups--right now I'm too weak for doing even a single pull up so I have to spend a few weeks starting in the "up" position and lowering myself slowly to build strength.  Weirdly, doing these pullup-things also seems to make my abs ridiculously sore.  Like, while I'm clinging to the bar for dear life and fighting to hang on, it also seems to give my abs a workout.  And now even sitting in this chair is making me remember that I have abs. Agh.

All in all though I'm feeling really good about my training right now.  It's only February and my next major race is in May.  Plenty of time left.