so I'm not very good at this whole "resting an injury" thing. I took about two full days off and iced and took some motrin and all of that, and after a few days of that everything was feeling pretty close to being back to normal. I could feel the teeniest bit of tightness in the hip when I was stretching, but otherwise everything felt pretty much the way it always does. I decided on Thursday that I would try a few miles, just to test things out.
A few miles in, I was feeling pretty good. It was one of those situations where you're constantly paranoid that something hurts when really things feel just about the way they should. Since I felt good at the two mile turn around point, I wanted to try a few extra miles to see how it would act with a higher mileage load. If it felt bad, I wouldn't even think about attempting my long run that weekend. Well, predictably, I started getting some tightening at around the six mile point, so I walked the last mile home and decided I would rest a few more days. There wasn't any pain, but there was some mild discomfort and I wasn't going to push it to the point where that became pain.
I took the weekend off and enjoyed some time in Michigan on Friday and Saturday at the wedding of a good childhood friend. On Saturday I was sorting through some boxes in my brother's garage and upon squatting noticed the tightness in my hip area again. This basically led to me FREAKING out about being injured on Sunday evening... let me tell you, me + being used to lots of mileage + not being "allowed" to run high mileage = someone in total freakout mode. seriously.
so I came up with a plan to try things out this week and if things weren't feeling hunky dorey (which I was suspecting) then I would dramatically scale everything back to a point where every single mile felt comfortable (if I felt comfortable running at all).
Enter Monday. I'm planning to do 2, 3 miles max, with the option to go one extra mile if I feel 100% ok. I get out and start running. After 1 mile, I'm waiting for the ball to drop.
... nothing. No pain, no discomfort, no tightness at all. So I go another mile.
... again, nothing. Everything felt GREAT. It is so odd to me that two extra days of rest can seemingly repair a nagging injury.
I did 4 on Monday and felt fantasic, so I decided I would try 6 on Tuesday, with the option to stop and walk if there was any discomfort, and the option to do an extra 2 if I felt fine. Well, everything felt awesome so I ended up doing the full 8. I started out slowly so that I could just kinda test things out and by the time I turned around things felt so good that I ended up negative splitting the run by 3 minutes. Today is a rest day so I am going to maybe do some yoga and strength training tonight, and then I have to decide how to proceed the rest of the week with scaling my runs.
I guess I just needed to be more patient with my body and let it rest for a full week, but it's really hard to know when you need just a day or two off versus needing a longer chunk of time. I am beyond ecstatic though that things seem to be back to normal... I was going crazy not being able to run as much as I wanted to!
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4 comments:
yeah, nagging injuries when you are in the middle of a high mileage plan are the worst. You might want to try taking an ice bath once a week (I would do them after my long run). I had way way way less of those kinds of injuries when I kept up with that schedule. It's not the most pleasant 15 minutes in the world, but holy hell does it make your legs recover faster.
and...that last comment about ice baths was from Leah...who was logged in as her Dad scott's account
(((Mouse)) Be gentle and rest up! I agree with Leah's last comment regarding the ice baths.
Yay, I'm so glad you are feeling better! I'm going to have to echo the ice bath idea. I had been having a nagging hip thing going on during my last training cycle, and it became much more manageable (and eventually disappeared) once I started throwing in ice baths. Hope the hip keeps behaving itself so you can get back to normal training!
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