Last week was a good week. On Monday, I ran 10 miles to sort of make up for not doing the 16-mile run that I was supposed to do 2 days earlier. Tuesday, I ran 4.5-miles with Dr. Ed Wolfgram. Thursday I ran 6.5 miles and Saturday morning I ran 16.5 miles for a grand total of 37.5 miles. The weather has been nice and cool and I feel like I’m back on track with training.

Now, onto our topic of the week: Staving off injury when training for endurance runs. My left hamstring was tight Saturday morning and this morning too. I think it might be because I ran from my house in the Central West End to downtown and back Saturday, and that means 2 things: I was running lots of hills and I was running on a canted surface.

These types of minor physical discomforts can cause a lot of mental unrest. You wonder: Will this strain get worse? Will something suddenly pull or pop and poof — training’s over and so is any hope of running the marathon? Will changing my stride help? Will it hurt? Will some good post-run stretching and ibuprofen take care of matters?

Now that I follow my own program and only run every other day, I don’t worry as much because I know my body will have more time to repair itself.