I hurt my leg overdoing it about two months ago.  Took a month off and started back again, still hoping to get ready for my November marathon.  I got as high as 7 miles last Saturday and the pain is back.  Not as bad as before, but there.  I took a few days off.  Today I ran about 2 miles with a little pain in my leg.  I think it's safe to say that I won't be marathon ready by first weekend in November.  I've done several half marathons so I'm not sure why now my leg is acting up.  My question is, do I just chalk it up to "not ready this year," and hope for next year, slowly building, healing, etc.  Or do I try to start and walk the marathon, or walk/run, etc to try to finish and take the chance of having to dnf?  I know what I think I should do but I'm getting conflicting advice and I wanted to see what the consensus here is.  Thanks.

I am in more or less the same boat as you. I am currently (hopefully) in recovery mode, but no way I will be anything close to properly trained in time for mine in October. I am strongly leaning towards DNS rather than attempting some kind of run/walk slog, which would probably be unrewarding as well as risky. DNS is probably the smart decision, although is hard to accept when it is a major race you have been looking forward to.

This is me: I was injured at the end of May with an awful heel pain that stopped me dead at the 12th mile of a 14 mile run. Unable to run for weeks after that. After X rays, nuclear medicine, PT, etc... it was determined that I have PF. I guess I could have started running again after 4 or 5 weeks, with 2 slow miles here and two slower miles there. But that's just not me. That would have killed the joy of running for me. Instead, I waited 7 weeks and kept active with other physical activities. After 7 weeks of no running, I tried one run. No pain, so I made it a 5 miler. First week running: 35 miles. Second week: 55 miles. Third week: 60 miles. Sure, I've lost lots of speed. But being able to produce mileage, without that terrible pain, is what counts the most for me. Speed will come back eventually, after I do my homework (speedwork).

I guess that what I'm trying to say is that I'd rather take a very long recovery period, while trying to maintain fitness as high as I possibly can, and then return to running the way I used to know it. Building up at turtle pace, and running like an invalid would just kill me mentally. But I realize that I am a high risk taker, a gambler even, and that some people will think that what I'm doing is stupid. We all have different personalities and we must respect that. Our reasons for doing what we are doing are not all the same...

Follow your gut feeling. It's what works best usually. If I were you, my gut feeling would tell me to not attempt the marathon in November. Your goal, initially, was to run it, not walk it or run/walk it. If you can't go more than 2 miles now without pain, forget training. Get rid of the pain first.

I hope you can run totally pain free soon!

One of the best decisions I ever made as a runner was to DNS a November marathon.  I had planned for that as my BQ attempt in November, 2011.  Instead, I got hurt in July and missed six weeks.  I could have run the marathon in November and probably managed a BQ but I didn't want to "just finish."  Rather, I wanted to run a good race.  So, I concentrated on building mileage through the end of the year.  Then, beginning in January, I focused on training for a March marathon.  Rather than stumbling across the finish, I beat my BQ time by over 20 minutes and ran one of the best races of my life in adverse weather conditions.

Other races will always be there but if you try to push yourself to make this race, you run the risk of ending up injured again.

Better to finish 26.2 in 1 piece. It is worth the wait.

I ran 5 marathons before I did my first half so don't think it has to be done that way.

It depends on what your goals are.

You are obviously not training optimally, so your expectations have already been lowered (or should have been), now it is just a matter of how much lower do you want to go with those expectations.

I was injured and unable to train the way I originally planned, but I really, really wanted to run that event so my expectations went all the way down to basically a 26.2 mile easy pace run!

It is nothing to write home or brag about but I was so happy to complete that race.

This year, my goals are much more lofty and were I not able to train at those goals, running another slow marathon (slow for me) does not appeal to me so I would sit it out.

For what it's worth, I limited my weekday runs to around 45 minutes and my Sunday long run to about 90.  It wasn't much, but it got me to the starting corral and across the finish line...albeit looking like death on a stick lol!