Fingers crossed for tomorrow's 50K

Tomorrow I'm supposed to be running the Malibu Creek 50K, the race that I ran last year as my first ultra. I know that I am completely unprepared for the hills/climb as I have only done 3 trail runs in the past few months.  But I'm not worried about covering the distance.  What worries me is that I have not healed from the pains that hit during the OC100K.  Being sick the past 9 days has been a blessing in disguise as it's meant I've done very minimal running.  I've focused on resting, walking around in my Vibrams, doing yoga, and relaxing.

Last night my wonderful boyfriend gave me a deep massage on my right leg; what scared me is that he immediately noticed what he described as a red line under my skin running from my outer knee up my outer thigh to my hip.  He immediately started massaging along that line and the pain I felt was unlike any I've experienced; the pain I've been feeling has been going from my hip to my knee so it's not surprising that area is tender but the tenderness of certain spots has my hoping it's just muscular or my ITB but researching stress fractures.  Today it hurts to even gently touch those areas.

I tested out my legs on a short run and felt discomfort within a half mile.  I kept to a flat, gravel/dirt path near my apartment and, for the most part, kept to a slow, recovery pace.  Thankfully, the right leg pain improved over the run, though my left arch is not 100%.  And apparently I overdid it wearing my Vibram KSOs; I wore them for several hours daily at work and ran 1 mile on the treadmill in them; my right achilles (the one I tore 3 times in high school) was very tight and sore today.  I clearly suck at "gradually" easing into anything!  What this means for tomorrow is unclear.  I'm excited that I'll be able to see several runner friends, including Billy, Emil, Shacky, Deirdre, Lori, but I'm already prepared to drop at the 25K mark if I feel I'm doing damage to some already sore spots.

During today's run, I kept remembering that I've yet  to learn a very important lesson- gradually increase mileage.  My running logs over the past 7 months look like a "what-not-to-do" memo.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my body will forgive me and allow me to continue training for the SD100.  In about 26 hours, I'll know how much my body loves me.