When the Injury Bug Bites Hard

Runners are terrific whiners. I do my best too.

July has been a disaster for my own running. The injury bug has bitten hard. It's as if my warranty ran out, and everything starting falling apart. Eerie. Literally, July 1 arrived and I woke up with a right hip that hurt so much it was hard to walk, hell it was even hard to sleep for a couple days. That lasted only about 3 days and then simply went away (weird), but just as suddenly two old injuries arose to slap me back down again: my left hip (probably piriformis syndrome) and my right hamstring (probably irritated scar tissue from a strain to the semi-tendonosis and/or semi-membranosus). The left hip thing has been a recurring problem for years, and has knocked me down for months at a time twice before. The right hamstring thing was my first truly debilitating running injury, and dates back to 1993, when it basically stopped me from running competitively for almost 3 years. Both scare me more than they should, because both have caused me to sit on the sidelines extensively.

Needless to say, I'm frustrated and impatient (of course). I've tried to do a bit of cycling, but frankly I'm not sure that it's not prolonging the problems. Therefore, I've taken the past few days off entirely. We runners really hate this, but at this point it's probably my only hope.

My right leg was feeling better over the weekend, so I strapped on my running shoes and tried to jog very gingerly. No good. My right hamstring hurt immediately and hurt a lot (not just a dull ache, but a stabbing pain), so after one lousy city block of slow jogging I stopped and walked home, head hung low.

I wouldn't wish the injury bug on anybody. Oh, it's not the physical pain of the injury, because that's short-lived and certainly tolerable. It's the psychological anguish of not being out there training, of knowing that my hard-earned fitness is seeping away by the day, of not having that one hour per day of fresh air and physical movement to help set a positive tone for the rest of my waking hours. I miss all of that, and more .. and it's only been three weeks! Argh. I just hope that August will be better, somehow. For now, I think I'd better brush up on my swimming technique (or lack thereof, to be more-accurate).

I was doing okay in two local grand prix series, but these two nagging problems will dash any hope for one of them (the MDRA road race series, because there are two races this week and I am not in any position to run a race right now, so I will skip them and thus I will not have enough total races to be able to compete with the other grand prix runners at the end of the series - darn). I still have some hope for the UMTR series, as the next race I plan to run is not until August 11, so I still may be able to get to that one if I can somehow heal fast. Fingers crossed!