Misery

According to the weather website it was 26 degrees in Dublin today and all over the east coast, there are high temperatures predicted for the North in a few days and basically for the rest of the country as well, except for one corner, tugged away to the south-west. I know I would not want to have the 40 degrees they are experiencing in some parts of Europe right now, but come on. A little bit of sunshine would have been nice! All afternoon it was raining steadily. What the fuck ever convinced me to settle in this miserable wet spot of all the places I could have gone to!

Anyway, as promised, I kept ignoring the discomfort emerging from my right hip/groin area and kept training all week. I found an old entry in my blog that seemed to describe something very similar happening almost 3 years ago and was pleased to read that the problem had gone away after 5 days. Obviously I was hoping for the same outcome again but by now it's been 5 days already and if anything this has gotten worse (it's hard to tell). At some stage I may have to conclude that I have finally succumbed to a running injury, for the first time in what, eight years? I'm not ready for that yet and will keep running and hoping that it clears up. Stupid? Maybe. But it has worked for every niggle I've had for the last 8 years.

A bit of research brought me to the pectineus muscle, though I am not really sure. The area of concern tends to get painful every time I get up from a sitting position; the pain more or less goes away after half a minute of walking around. Running feels very awkward for the first quarter of a mile before it all settles down. I try not to change my running form as that would only invite a secondary issue springing up elsewhere. Because running as such doesn't really hurt I'm still living in hope that at least I'm not aggravating things further by running.

I ran very, very slowly on Monday morning, much slower than expected. It was more due to the humidity than the problem with my hip (which tends to become more or less unnoticeable after a couple of miles anyway) but still. I missed the evening run that day due to real world issues, which also cost me a few hours of sleep as I found it very hard to fall asleep. These things happen from time to time, nothing you can do about it.

I was back doing hill drills on Tuesday morning. I started with high knees as I was unsure if thigh drive was a good idea with my dodgy leg but did those as my second set anyway. I find them really hard. I usually do them 3 times in a row with a slow walk down the hill as recovery. The idea was to do 3 x 90 seconds but it was more like 90/75/60 seconds, and then I was panting, hands on knees, trying to suck some air into hurting lungs, which at least made the pain in the leg muscles go unnoticed.

I more or less repeated the effort on Wednesday, except that I reversed the order of the drills. The thigh drive was still as hard as ever but the high knees are starting to feel doable. I managed 4 minutes in one go, which is more or less the goal. At least I can see some progress being made, though the goal is to become good at running, not good at doing hill drills.

29 Jun

8 miles, 1:08:03, 8:30 pace, HR 135

30 Jun

am:9+ miles, 1:31:04, 10:04 pace, HR 140

   Hill drills: 4x30 sec sprints; high knees; thigh drive; hill sprints

pm:5 miles, 38:11, 7:38 pace, HR 145

1 Jul

am:9.5 miles, 1:34:45, 9:58 pace, HR 141

   Hill drills: 5x30 sec sprints; thigh drive; high knees; hill sprints

pm:5 miles, 39:40, 7:56 pace, HR 138