Off Day

No training today. I've worked out the last 2 nights and I'm still fighting some back pain and a little residual chest pain from a bike ride last week. The back pain I can understand. I felt fine when I went to bed Monday night, and woke up Tuesday morning with a knot in the middle of my back. So I obviously slept wrong or did something in the night. The chest pain I'm not sure about. It is not heart attack chest pain or muscle soreness chest pain. It feels like my sternum hurts. It was OK before the bike ride, but when I got home that night it was hurting. I'm hoping it will just work itself out soon, because I've only been on my new bike a couple of times, and I'm anxious to get back on. I'm hoping the bike riding will help with the running. I need to add the extra leg strength that I can get from riding without the pounding the running gives me. Strength is going to be a big issue in the marathon training. Right now I don't have the leg strength to really push myself like I need to. That's the dilemma. When running (or walking), I don't have the leg strength to push my lungs hard enough. I can't improve my VO2 max moving as slowly as I am. But if I try and push it too hard, my legs can't hold up. I think the bike is a nice alternative. Pascal and I had a pretty good ride (for me) twice around Lake Hefner last Thursday, approximately 19 miles. My lungs were burning and my legs were shot, but I felt pretty good. No muscle soreness the next day, but the chest thing has been nagging me all week. I'll give it another week or so before I start to get worried. I'm going to try to be as systematic as I can with the training. I'm hoping to give myself about 5 months to really focus on the marathon. That leaves me 3 months or so to work on building a solid foundation and start shedding some weight. I would like to be around 225 when the 5 month training program begins. To get to that point, I think I need to make a couple of big changes. I will go over these in detail tomorrow, but the short version is training time and nutrition. There are a ton of other variables, but those 2 stand out right now. For tonight, though, it is back to the heating pad to try and loosen up my back. Hopefully it will be warmer tomorrow night so I can get back out on the road.