Rehabbing an Injury

Hi all,

I'm a 25 year old female, currently weigh 158lbs at 5'9". My BMI has been on the higher side or normal for a while now, and I'd generally like to look more toned and feel happier with my body, as well as loosing 15-20lbs. I live a fairly active lifestyle, love walking and hiking, but was having trouble being motivated to keep up a workout schedule, so I decided I needed a goal: I signed up to run a marathon in November.

Since I've never run a race longer than a 5k, I started training really easily, in March, with just 5 minute intervals of walking and jogging, steadily increasing (10 minute intervals, 15 minutes, 20, etc.) until I felt comfortable jogging for 30 minutes without stopping. I then followed a training plan that actually involved milage, starting with 3 miles as the short run, and 5 as the long. I've been really enjoying running, and find it's a great motivator, but I think that I may have ended up pushing my training too fast too soon, even though I was trying to keep it easy. I'm pretty sure that I have a torn quad muscle now, in my left leg. It's not severe at all, since I can still walk on it, move it all around, stretch without pain, and even hop on it. But it certainly does hurt when I run. I tried ignoring this for a while, hoping that it would heal itself in a few weeks with proper stretching and icing after runs, but no luck. Two weeks ago, I ran 7 miles on it, having taken an ibuprofen an hour beforehand, virtually pain free. Last week, I ran 6 and felt the pain certainly for the first 3. Last Monday, I couldn't even complete an easy 3 miles, and had to stop. I went to my local running store and they showed me some good stretches to loosen the muscle and work out the stiffness, and suggested that I cut out my long runs until it's healed.

I didn't want to hear this, and since the stretches seemed to be helping so much (I was also doing some foam rolling in the gym), and since I successfully did a 3 miler with minimum pain later in the week, I decided to go out for my 7 miler on Saturday anyway. Luckily I decided to stop after 2 miles, since I was limping the entire time, and I just realized that this is getting ridiculous. I need time to let this injury actually heal before I make it worse by trying to push through. I've altered my training schedule for the next month so that there's no running at all, just low-impact alternatives (elliptical), and lots of stretching and strength training. I'm hoping that if I really dedicate myself to rehabbing this now, when it's still not severe (again, can walk, hike, stretch, move generally all around with minimal to no pain, and no loss of mobility), I may still be able to get back to training in time to run the marathon.

But, I'm TOTALLY bummed to not be training right now. Doing the same milage on the elliptical, while my leg doesn't hurt at all, is just not even close to the same thing. This is the first time I've ever really experienced this, and am looking for advice/motivation from others out there. (If you've actually taken the time to read this novel of a post, sorry about the length!)