Holding Pattern

"You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there" Edwin Louis Cole

Right ... but right now I'm just treading water!
Excuse the crude frankness of the expression, but running injuries suck.
I've been battling the recurrence of an old lower hamstring injury for more than two months now. It seems to improve, but then flares back up again as soon as I try even the shortest jog. I'm broken!

I'm sure I've got some kind of imbalance going on, the problem is that it seems as if everyone has a different opinion on what to do about it. These include:

• Rest (makes sense, been doing it, helps a little, probably only treating the symptoms and not the cause)
• Drugs (I suppose, and I've popped some Ibuprofen, with little impact)
• Cross-train (yeah, good idea, as long as I go easy on the bike my leg seems okay)
• Stretch (hmm ... I worry about stretching an area that is already inflamed, but it is possible that tight hamstrings are contributing to this problem, so I'm trying to do light stretching - carefully)
• Massage (sure, but who can afford it?)
• Acupuncture (I'd used it for other pains before, it helps a little, but again seems to treat symptoms not causes)
• Yoga (I'm an old stiff runner, I'm afraid I'd snap in two!)
• etc.

The bottom line may be obvious: I don't really have a coherent plan, so I'm just treading water impatiently and hoping that something breaks in the right direction at some point. Re-reading that sentence, it seems a bit passive. I keep "testing" it, to see if it's improving - but I may actually be re-injuring it every time I do that. Running very gently on soft trails hurts the least, so I try to limit my jogs to that description. Otherwise, it's a lot of biking and hoping the cold autumn weather holds off for awhile.

I hope your running is going much better than mine. Appreciate it, you never know when it might be stolen away from you.