I did not make it far into my Post-Marathon Running Plan before things went off the rails. In fact, I didn’t make it the start at all.

The Saturday before I was planning to start, I went for an easy 30 minute run with friends. About 20 minutes into it, my left hip flexor got really tight, and I was in pain before I finished running. That took another four weeks to recover from.

I’m happy to report that I’ve been training without incident since then and have just finished the first week of phase 2 of my training plan.

I’m still focused on strength and mobility work over running, so Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I’m doing a workout of five minutes of yoga sun salutations to warm up, 5 sets of pullups, pushups, and body-weight squats for strength, then I finish with Jay Johnson’s SAM phase 2 easy day for hip strength and mobility.

Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday I do the scheduled run from Jack Daniel’s “White Starting Plan” (phase 2) and follow that up with Jay Johnson’s SAM phase 2 hard day.

I don’t think I’ll progress to Johnson’s SAM phase 3: the workouts get really involved and time consuming. I’ll be happy if I’m injury free and continuing to progress with the pullups, pushups, and squats and the running plan, and keep the SAM workouts at phase 2.