Deep and Utter Disappointment

Yesterday and today I ran for the first time since Never Summer 100K. Three weeks without a step run. Three weeks intended to heal some lingering injuries. Three weeks designed to improve my health.

I have been dealing with an injury issue that I can't resolve. It first cropped up in the summer of 2017 and has stuck around since then. First, a pinch in the left hip that then spread to the lower abdomen and groin. I've seen my primary care physician and an orthopedic sports medicine specialist and a physical therapist and a chiropractor. I've had X-rays and MRIs and injections and range of motion tests. The issue has been impossible to nail down. A torn hip labrum. An adductor strain. A psoas strain. Severe inflammation.

It has been extremely frustrating. The issue doesn't prevent me from running. I've raced two marathons, run a third for fun, race two 50Ks and Never Summer all with the injury present. I've run around 7000 training miles. I can run. And usually I can do exactly what I set out to do. But sometimes the injury really fires up and I can't run intervals the way I'd planned to. Or I have to stop several times during a long run because the pain manifests as pressure similar to the urge to poop. Or I can't walk up a set of stairs the next morning due to hip soreness. But mostly I can run, so I just continue running.

These three weeks without running were intended to really give whatever this unidentified injury is a good solid rest. If it truly was just a matter of sever inflammation, three weeks should largely help resolve that. Psoas or groin strains should feel a lot better. Three weeks is quite a bit of rest. I should feel meaningful improvement in the injury, at least for a while until the miles pile up again.

So, yesterday I headed out for my first run with high hopes. Not high hopes that it would be a good run. There was no chance after three weeks of no activity other than some yoga every other day (really tough stuff for me, but not aerobic running fitness) that the run was going to feel good. And it was a ragged mess, struggling to make it through a bit more than five miles. No surprise. But there was a surprise. My groin was tight. My abdomen became aggravated immediately. My hips unhappy. I wrote it off to first-day-back gunk and moved on.

Today I went out to run longer. Still a bit of a mess. My legs screamed at me by five miles in. Evidently, the yoga's really been doing a number on my quads (perhaps an answer to my "how to prepare quads for downhill running question!") But the groin, abdomen and hips were also super unhappy. I was immediately right were I had been a month ago. It's like I'd not taken a single day off. No improvement, none.

I was met with deep and utter disappointment. How could three weeks of total rest not improve this at all? How could I immediately be back in the same place I was before? It doesn't make sense. Just as nothing about this injury has made sense.

So I'll continue to blunder through. Mostly able to run what I want to run. Mostly able to train the way I hope to train. And next time I think about taking time off, I may simple ignore the impulse because, why?