I have a mutinous hamstring

So. The hamstring. Here's the timeline:

Tues, July 10: Injured (although I suspect it started on July 9 with sloppy step ups)
Fri, July 13: next run, a very slow 2 miles
Sat, July 14: Long run, 2.94 miles at the lake with the dog.
Didn't run for a week
Mon, July 23: Dr visit. He said no running for the rest of the week, ease back in next week.
Mon, July 30: Ran/walked 2x for 4 minutes during cardio blast workout. Felt great
Tues, July 31: Ran/walked 1 mile, biked 4, ran 0.5 miles. Felt great while doing it. Not so great the next day.

I haven't run since then. I've biked every time that I'm supposed to run (usually 2x the mileage). I've just about come to the decision that my hamstring is really just screwing with me. One day, it's perfectly fine. Then this weekend, it hurt badly enough that I was almost limping. I had planned to trying gently running again tomorrow, but I think that might be a bad idea. I'm supposed to run 2 miles on Friday, so I may try it again then, or I might wait until a week from tomorrow (scheduled 4 miles).

I just don't know what to do. One day, it's fine. The next, it's not. I'm not running. I'm icing it after biking, and sleeping with a heating pad on it at night. I try to stretch it frequently, but it seems like it hurts worse if I stretch it than if I don't. I bought a stick thing last night, and I'm going to use that too. I realllllly like it.

Back to the hamstring, and the obvious problem. I have a half marathon coming up on Oct 7. I have already paid for it, and the hotel has already been reserved. It's a week before my birthday, and I want to participate. Today starts week 4 of our training plan. The long runs are not yet longer than my longest distance (this week's long run is 5 miles). Week 7 is where the long run exceeds my longest distance (a 10K). I'm pretty sure that I need to sit out this week, and possibly next week too. But at what point do I have to decide that I can't run the race? I never intended to actually run the whole thing-I planned to run/walk it. I essentially have no running base now. I have a decent biking base (and a sore behind), but I don't think one translates to the other.

I'm fairly certain that Dallas is out. My running partner isn't sure she'll run it (half or full), and we may try for the Cowtown Marathon in Ft. Worth on Feb 24 instead. It does have a cooler name. If I run the full in Feb, that might derail my plans to run the Memorial Marathon at the end of April.

Here's my training plan, to date. Last week I finally managed to do all of my workouts, even if I didn't do what I was supposed to do. Yellow means I did the scheduled workout; blue means that I deviated (usually meaning bike instead of run).

 

Runs, just to keep my shoe mileage up to date:

July 31 (Tuesday): 1.5 miles (split 1, .5 by a 4 mile bike ride)