- Monday: Rest day.
- Tuesday: Rest day.
- Wednesday: Rest day.
- Thursday: Rest day.
- Friday: Rest day.
- Saturday: 5 miles. First two miles felt great, and I went out deliberately slow. After that, wheels fell off and I did some walk/run. Got to five miles, but still a lot of pain.
- Sunday: Rest day.
- Core/strength: Nothing beyond lots of rolling and stretching
So guess who got injured? This guy.
There’s a lot of self-pity going on right now, and I realize that. I’m also trying to give myself some time to wallow in it, acknowledge it, and then move on, but damn does it suck.
I seem to have ITBS problems every other training cycle or so, so I should be used to it by now, but holy hell is this bad. I took just about all of this week off to rest and to roll and stretch, usually twice a day. My run on Saturday was good, but I need more time off, so I’ll be back at it this week, and taking the entire week off, no running until Tuesday, April 2.
I’ll be adding in some additional strength exercises and stretches, augmenting what I’ve done in the past, and really, really hoping I don’t need to go to a doctor.
I know that part of it is that I wasn’t doing enough stretching and strengthening, and I know another part of it is just luck of the draw. I’m prone to ITBS and sometimes, even when training is going so great, it just pops up in runners (or some other malady will).
I can look back and realize my first 12 weeks (literally the first half of my plan) were awesome. I got faster, I did two 20’s and one 22 mile run, all feeling stronger than anything I ran last year. Two weeks off isn’t going to erase all my improvement, and I’m lucky that if I had to miss two weeks, these are the two to do, they basically repeat themselves, so I can jump back into a down week and then ramp back up.
I’ll miss out on hitting my 200-mile month, which was something I really wanted to hit, but I have to keep my eyes on my goal race (and the Pittsburgh Marathon, I’d love to, and I was on track to, knock significant time off of that).
I think part of why this is so hard is that running is therapy for me. I need that time to let my brain let go and process. That, combined with not being able to see my therapist for a longer interval than normal, has been messing with my head, even if I’m actually okay right now.
So I’ll wallow today for a bit longer, but realize that this is also part of mental training. Shit goes wrong, and we accept it and then deal with it. Writing has always been another refuge, so writing all this out has helped. It’s still tough, but at least acknowledging it all, seeing it down on paper (well, screen), helped me realize that yes, my plan is halfway over, but that is still halfway to my race. I’m a strong runner and people have run further with much less training, so maybe I got this!
Race reports owed: Jackpot.
