I'm back!
 

Stress fracture is healed, went for my first run in a few weeks today. Did a nice 5 miler at a blazing 9:25/mile pace. My legs felt like crap the whole time and my brain was begging me to stop, but somehow I managed to clomp my way through it. It's amazing how fast you can lose the fitness that it took you months to build.

Anyway, I just read "Advanced Marathoning" by Pete Pfitzinger. I'm going to give his training plan a try with next year's marathons. He has you doing a lot of VO2 max and tempo kind of stuff. Luckily I've got a couple of months to build my endurance back up before I would need to start into that.

5 miles is a long run for the first time back from a stress fracture. I'm trying to remember - was it your foot or lower leg? How did it feel?

Pfitzinger's approach sounds interesting. Can you post a little more on it when you get a chance?

That didn't take long! How's the pain after 5 miles?

It was in my ankle/shin area. It was a little sore afterwards this morning, but feels fine now.

I'll post some more about Pfitz when I get home tonight. It's a really good book. He gets into more of a scientific approach to running, and then applies it to the training. It's interesting stuff.

That's what I thought...but I went to the doc yesterday and he said it was good to go. It was a bit sore after, but doesn't hurt at all now.