faster with age

     No miles today or tomorrow to rest my hip the best I can before Saturday. I don't think I have as much confidence in being able to run the marathon as my orthopedic doc does and before going to him on Tues I had pretty much decided I wasn't running Saturday. My wife and I decided we were going down either way and doing some hiking in Zions if I didn't run [or if I don't end up running very far]. I'll have no way of knowing if all the anti-inflammatory meds are working until I'm a few miles into the marathon because everything feels normal. So I guess I'm going to give it a shot. The doc doesn't feel like I can do any permanent damage so I guess the worst that could happen is having to quit at mile 3 and catching a ride to the end. I don't think I would walk it out if I have to quit way early. I'd save it for hiking with the family in Zions. I plan to start out with the 3 hour group and see how it goes for a bit. I felt pretty confident about a sub 3 hour 4 weeks ago after TOU half. My times from my last 2 races [TOU 1/2 and Des news 10k] both had me running St George at 2:56:57 on Sashas race predicter. My training has been so poor the past few weeks that I'm sure I have lost some fitness. I've only been able to run more than 2 1/2 miles 5 days out of the last 4 weeks and 14 days out of the last 6 weeks. I only had one full week of running in the past 6 weeks and that was 4 weeks ago. Hopefully my biking and hiking has kept me from losing too much fitness but the running muscles haven't had much use latley. If my hip holds out I'm quite confident I can PR. I should still be in better shape than I was last year when I ran 3:14 into that huge headwind. Last year I wasn't able to run until the last 4 weeks before the race. Kind of the opposite of this year. Good luck to everyone running Saturday.