08 December 2011

Minor setback

The best laid plans . . . well, sometimes they don't work out exactly as we'd like them to. Some of you may recall from a previous post that I have laid out some pretty specific plans for completing a marathon by the time I turn 30. While that plan is not completely derailed, it is at least going to be slightly delayed. The amount of time for which it will be delayed has yet to be determined.
You see, I seem to have suffered an injury in my left quad. I actually pulled it and knew I had last fall. I was doing some sprints in order to increase my speed. I was running on a track at the time. I stopped doing the sprints, but continued running even though I had pain; I can deal with pain - I do childbirth without any drugs. I also changed the direction in which I was running on the track. The pain decreased, and then soon after that I lost all motivation to run for a while (I was pregnant and feeling a little sick). Later during my pregnancy I did cardio workouts on an elliptical, so there was little to no impact. That muscle should have healed completely. And I suppose it did.
My recovery was SO good after having Enoch, that I began running even sooner than I had hoped I'd be able to. I ran my first 5K near the end of September, sooner than I had originally anticipated. Rather than just keep on running 3 miles a few days a week to maintain the fitness I had achieved, I decided to train for a 10K even though by the time I was ready there wouldn't be any official 10K to run. Things went swimmingly with my plan until after I ran 4 miles. Then my leg started to ache, but not so much that I thought I needed to worry about it or back off of my training. Not too long after that I ran 6 miles for the first time ever. My leg hurt so badly! It was basically throbbing on and off during the rest of the day.
Having very little experience with muscle injuries . . . or injuries of any kind really (I was seriously one of the least injury-prone dancers I knew) I found it hard to believe that this kind of pain was originating in the muscle. I thought it surely had to be nerves, or possibly even bone! But I'm married to an athletic trainer, and while he doesn't have a bone scanner he can pretty accurately dismiss the possibility of a stress fracture. It's a pulled muscle. The end. It is a pretty major muscle that gets used a lot, so I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised that it was bothering me so much.
He's treated me with some fancy thing that has electrodes (I feel like such an athlete when he hooks me up to it :) to help the muscle fibers heal. I was completely taking it easy for a whole week, then tried running a mile (my leg felt like it hadn't rested at all) so now I have taken my training way down in order to let my muscle heal. It's a little frustrating. I had been planning to do speed workouts in December, start training for a triathlon at the beginning of January and then train for the marathon after that was done. But I'll have to spend some time working back up to 3 miles before I can do that probably. *sigh*
For now, I'm just doing 20-30 minute workouts on an elliptical or a stationary bike and doing some strength training. I just really hope that this will be the only injury I have to deal with as I try to complete these goals. Here's hopin'.

2 comments:

  1. such a bummer Rachael! You have awhile though so I'm sure everything will work out in the end! Its pretty much awesome that your husband can help you though! I had IT band problems right around the time I had to start training for the marathon. It was so frustrating. ug.

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  2. Oh man, that is super frustrating. Though can I say that it is pretty convenient that you are married to an athletic trainer, ha ha? I started running several months before I was pregnant because I REALLY wanted to keep going during the pregnancy, and the past month and a half I have been pretty sick and just can't even thing about running. Boo! I am not looking forward to working back up to where I was (or not being able to until after the baby comes). But, I guess we do what we can. Although it would be great to reach your goal by the time you had set, I am guessing that part of the purpose of the goal is to have motivation to stay in shape and push yourself (in a healthy way, of course), so at least you are doing that!

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