Running Again

If you are a regular reader of this blog (and I’m about to hit 500 views since I started this blog in December, so yay for that), you may have noticed that my running-related posts have been less frequent lately. I’ve been dealing with some injury problems for the past few weeks, and it’s been super annoying. Here are the basics:

• I have ongoing issues with my IT band on my right side. This has been a problem since last year and I’ve seen a sports medicine doctor about it. As long as I’m conservative in my mileage build-up, wear an IT band strap while running, and stretch properly, I can usually keep it under control.
• However, in my long run on March 4 (6.1 miles), I also pulled a hamstring muscle on my left side. For about a week, I was almost completely unable to run and any attempt to do anything involving a long stride was quite painful.
• After a week or so, I was able to do 2-3 mile runs again, but my stride was noticeably shorter. Three miles was also my limit, because my butt felt like it was about to fall off at that point.
• Somehow, that hamstring pull that messed up my left side also aggravated the IT band on the opposite side again, probably because I’d been favoring the “good” leg.

Overall, this has left me feeling like my body is a big old mess. I’ve been doing a lot more yoga and cross-training than I’d like lately, and part of that has been to stretch and strengthen the area of my hips/thighs/butt. There’s been a lot of bridge pose and one-legged bridge poses going on in my house.

The bad news is that I’m going to miss my monthly goal of 50 miles by a wide margin. The toll on my overall mileage is obvious:

This should be punctuated with a frowny face. :`(

The good news, though, is three-fold: 1) I ran 4 miles today, which I take as a positive sign for recovery; 2) There are lots of cool races coming up in my area, so I’m hopeful that I can make a goal to motivate myself; 3) I’m going to California at the end of this week which, in addition to being generally awesome, means I should probably be able to get in some longer and faster runs. I always seem to perform better when I’m out of the desert. March is probably going to be a bit of a bust, but there’s plenty to look forward to in April.