Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Injury denial and a different perspective

Posted by Rachel

For a while there, I was thinking that as I got older and more experienced at running I was becoming better at making good/smart running decisions. It turns out, this is false.

So here's what really happened. About 2 weeks before the LA Marathon (while I was tapering), my inner thigh, outer thigh, and hip started hurting. Every single day when I woke up in the morning, it hurt to walk. At first, I dismissed this as one of the famous "phantom taper pains". The problem is it persisted every single day. The only good thing about it was that it would actually diminish as I ran. "It can't be a real injury," I thought. "Real injuries don't feel better after a run." Also, false.

Since I've already blogged about this, I think we all know what happened. I convinced myself this wasn't a real injury and ran the LA Marathon. In hindsight, I am lucky that the marathon didn't make this thing worse. In hindsight, I am also really lucky that compensating for this injury for several weeks didn't cause another injury.

This past Saturday, after almost a month of being in pain that would only disappear sporadically after exercise, I went to see my sports massage/bodywork guy. At first he told me I had a tight ligament in my hip (so far, this wasn't bad). Then, after working some more, he informed me that I had pulled a groin and had a bunch of muscles stuck together everywhere (causing the tight hip ligament and many other problems). At this point he was kind of looking me like I was a psychopath for running marathon on it, but saying no such thing. He fixed a bunch of the problems but told me I was to REST (walking only, no swim/bike/run) for 4 - 7 days so things could heal up. When I left his office, the first thing I thought was "Hmm, should I run the Couple's Relay tomorrow?"

The Couple's Relay is hosted every February by our local running club, where 2 people team up and run a 5k each. In mixed gender couples the girl runs first and the guy runs second. After all of my (smarter than me) running friends weighed in, it was decided that I would walk and NOT RUN the first leg. Travers was really awesome about it. I walked a 5k in 42:49 and finished behind a couple hundred people. The only person I beat was a lady carrying her dog, and Travers started his race after several teams had already finished both relay legs. But he stuck it out and supported me anyway - for better or worse, right?

Being in the back of the pack offers a different perspective. It's hard in a very different way than being "in the race". When you're in a 5k race, you're running so hard you feel like you're going to puke. When you're in back, there's nobody around. You're getting lapped, and you know those people will be enjoying the post race festivities long before you. The spectators on the course are cheering for the super fast people, but when you come by they look at you quizzically like, "hmm, is this girl really in the race?" This was a good experience for me because walking a 5k race was challenging in a completely different way than I expected.

In conclusion, this stupid injury helped me get over my post-marathon burnout real quick. Looking forward to getting back out there soon!

1 comment:

  1. Ugh, injuries suck, but sounds like you are being really smart and recovering! It doesn't hurt that at least yours came after meeting your race goal, right? In the very few races I've done in the past two years, I've been much further back than I've ever been before so it's definitely been a different experience, and I think you're right it's good for perspective!

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