Cancelling my fall plans, what now?

After a bunch of back and forth argument with myself, I have decided to cancel my fall race plans. I was going to do Milwaukee and MCM marathons, but I have had a nagging soleus injury that just hasn't been letting me run enough miles to get in quality training and it flares up particularly bad after long runs right when I need to be getting into the higher miles. So, I figured that rather than torture myself, that I will let it heal and focus on lower miles. It seems fine for all the slow 4-6 mile runs that I want, but anything fast or long really aggravates it.

I plan to race the Illinois Marathon next spring and will start training for that in January. My question is what should I do until then? I have totally rested the last week and now plan to only run slow 4-5 mile runs 3-4 times/week until things are totally healed up. I was thinking of maybe doing some p90X or something mixed in, focusing mainly on abs and upper body. Then maybe around mid-September to October I could try adding longer runs back in and in Nov/Dec I could do a bit of speed work or something with it too. Basically I want to try to gain overall fitness and start the next marathon training cycle injury free but I also don't want to be bored!

Any suggestions on how to fill the time between now and January?

Well I think that you are making the correct choice to let your injury heal.

I think that since you can run all the short slow miles you want I would spend this time wisely by building your aerobic fitness. Also find what that threshold is were the calf starts to hurt.

Another words find how far you can run and at what pace were it begins to hurt. So lets say you can get up to 15 miles and after that it hurts, then set your long runs at max of 15 miles. If you want to have some time of speed sessions again do the same thing with mileage find what is the max pace and for how long you can hold that pace before the calf starts to hurt and then don't cross that threshold. I would think that the best form of speed work might be doing fartlek runs.

If you want to gain fitness and you want to feel strong for you training cycle in Jan. and you want to race Illinois Marathon in the Spring again I would speed the time doing slow to medium pace aerobic runs. Build that aerobic engine the best you can and I'm willing to bet you will run a huge PR in the Spring!

Awww sorry to hear this Carleen but it sounds like you are being very wise. I'd say go for p90x or any kind of strength training for awhile and of course good ol' swimming. When I was injured, once the troubled area was feeling a bit better but still not 100% I focused on doing some lower body strength training and focused on a lot of stability exercises - anything I could do to exercise each leg individually. It really helped. Sometimes total rest isn't the key to healing an injury but go at it easily.

Like P90X is not enough.

Good call to cancel the races!

P90X has plenty of abs and strength in it but if you do it I'd still try to do what running you can without aggravating your injury.

I was thinking for the time being of a schedule that does P90X 3 days and running 3 days (only 4-5 mile runs for now) with one day off. Basically go every other day with each. I did something like that once before with p90X. Basically I just do the P90X strength stuff and run instead of doing the aerobics or plyometrics (which would likely bug my calf anyway). Then after a month or so I'll move to 2 days of P90X and start adding in a longer run, and phase back to all running a month or so after that maybe. I suppose that to some extent I will have to play it by ear. I like Schuey's suggestion of getting in plenty of basic aerobic miles once I am able to do so, which I should be able to do OK fairly soon. The calf already is much happier since I quit subjecting it to long runs.