If the miles behind me could be put into words before you, you would feel my efforts, my struggles, my desires. Most of all you would see my joy. Watch me from afar run the trails and hills and miles upon miles and you will see ...

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Too much to say

Anytime I have a lapse in blogging it usually means one of two things: There's no races to report on or it's the dead of winter and nothing's going on, or, I'm injured. Again. Unfortunately the last six weeks I've been dealing with this crazy hip thing going on that started with me thinking it was a pulled muscle in the rectus femorus (upper thigh). I had been running sub-7:00 miles comfortably ever since the half-marathon and had a great four-hour run a few days before I got this stabbing, debilitating pain in my upper thigh. It forced me to walk the rest of the way home.
I went to ART and to physio a couple times and it started to get better but never felt 100% even after a couple weeks. We went to San Francisco for ten days and while there I ran three :45 runs on consecutive days. By the third run I felt nearly the same discomfort that I did when it initially started.
I started thinking it had to be something else and it hit me that it might be my hip again out of alignment and was pinching or aggravating something in the thigh. I went to see a chiro/ART doctor out in Guildford and he confirmed the hip was out. A little twisting here, some cracking there, and I felt quite a bit better. Three visits later and I'm feeling almost normal other than not being in shape for the World 100k in Italy in a week and a half.
I've built up my time running to 4 hours which was today out at Boundary Bay. I'm sticking to dead flat runs this time because that's what the course is. I figured I should try and strengthen the muscles that work on the flat roads because I have such a short window to get ready. That will be my last long run before the "race". I'm hoping to go under 8 hours but after today I know that might be a stretch seeing as the quads weren't too happy when I was done. Felt some cramping coming on. Like I've said a hundred times in the past - we'll see.