Murphy's Law???? and Twitter question

In the prep for every big race, it seems like there's always a moment when something goes wrong or at least seems to be going wrong. Usually, it's best to just relax and rest and know that the training is done and rest is good. But, I think we all know that can be hard to do

When I ran my marathon PR, I came down with a minor cold about 11 or 12 days out, and on race day, I wasn't sure if I was 100%. It turned out that I was fine, but I had worried for more than a week about a very minor illness.

Before my first 100 mile attempt, I got really sick about two months before the race and ended up having a super-comprehensive physical done, including a cardiac stress test. Finally, a blood test seemed showed some elevated white cell counts and the sports doc suggested I was overtrained and simply needed to rest a bit more.

Before Hardrock in 2004, I stubbed a toe really badly on a trail-marking day less than a week from the start. I still believe that I broke the toe, but I refused to see a doctor. I simply rested and dealt with the pain on race day. My toe looked like one of those cocktail wieners for a few days, but it was much better by race day.

So, this is obviously going somewhere, right? Yesterday, I noticed that my left hamstring seemed tight and sore all day. By the time I was ready to run home, it was really aching. I decided to skip running and just rest the leg. I spent some time last night using a "Stick" to massage the area. Today, I was planning some marathon pace miles, but it doesn't really feel better.

Back in late March, I had a similar problem just before a 50K. Between lifting and some speedwork, I tweaked my right hamstring (I think it was the right one). Two days before my race, I started a run but bailed after less than half a mile. On race day, I was fine. But, I was only planning to cruise control the 50K that day, not race a marathon.

So, I think I'll go to the gym tonight and do some upper body lifting. I'll skip running completely today. Tomorrow after work, I'll probably try a run. If the leg feels really good, I may try some MP miles, but I'll choose discretion over speed if things are iffy.

BTW, does anyone who ever comes here have any good experience with Blogger and Twitter gadgets? I was trying to put a simple Twitter gadget here yesterday so I can post my marathon result from my cell phone after the race. A number of the available gadgets have bugs that Blogger doesn't like, and the one that didn't seem to have bugs was kind of ugly and didn't quite fit into the space where I wanted to put it.

I still have to figure out the posting from cell phone thing, considering that I don't really "do" text messaging. But, I think I can make that happen if I can "Twitter-fy" this page.