Sunday, September 7, 2008

Sunday gloom

I'm thinking about going off-blog with the running for this coming week, as it will be edifying to nobody to have me agonizing over injury possibilities. I was supposed to run 6 this morning with postdoc J., who's back in town for a visit. It's a bright and beautiful morning here, but I was pretty worried when I stretched about whether the hamstring would be OK, and I decided to bail after about a mile.

Week 7 was supposed to be 30 miles; I did twenty (a 7 and a 13), but the two shorter ones (projected as 4 and 6) have both been cut short due to serious discomfort in the left hamstring. I'm going to take Monday and Tuesday totally off from running; I'll swim tonight and tomorrow evening, though the schedule won't permit me to on Tuesday.

I'm working out with M. on Wednesday morning, so I'll try for 4 miles on the treadmill beforehand, and if it's no good I'll switch to some other cardio machine at the gym. Scheduled to run with triathlete L. on Thursday and will wait to see about that till after the Wednesday treadmill session.

The Queens half is on Sunday; obviously it's important to me because of this wretched half-marathon grand prix (a solely internal commitment, but one I've gone to some trouble to achieve and would like to see through to the end), but it's also seemed a good way to do next weekend's fifteen-miler with decent focus. (Warm up 2 miles first, then run the race at a suitable pace - training pace, I am now thinking - if I can even do it at all, ARGHHHHHHH!)

I guess I just have to wait and see how it goes. I ran through a very painful injury two years ago in the run up to my first half-marathon, and it turned out to be a stress fracture and I was off from running for something like four months, which was mentally agonizing to me. I will not make that mistake again, but it is certainly going to be a bit of a trial if I can't do that marathon this fall. If it's not better in a week, I will make a doctor's appointment, but it is hard to imagine what they will say that will be useful...

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Just an idea, but what might do you better than a doctor's appointment could be a referral to a good sport centred physiotherapist.

Leah said...

Agree with Wendy. Also, watch what you do at the gym. Might be worth skipping any lunges and squats this week. (I've had hamstring trouble recently too. Ugh.)

Rebecca H. said...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that you get better fast ...

ShirleyPerly said...

Having gone through a hammy thing myself recently, I feel your pain (no pun intended). I too think that a visit with a sports physio or very knowledgable sports massage therapist may be more useful than a visit to a regular doc.