Unplanned Hiatis

The last few months have been pretty strange for me. I have barely run a step since the end of February. And after the really good year I had last year it has been pretty frustrating. Especially since it all seemed to be going pretty well over the winter.

After I finished the Shut In Trail race in early November I came home and did Bills' Bad Ass 50K the following weekend. The course is a loop repeated 6 times. So I figured I would just run a few loops and stop if I didn't feel recovered from Shut In. But I actually felt really good and did the whole thing. That was my last long race of the season. I backed down my mileage for December and January. And really I hadn't even begun to increase the mileage yet when during an easy 5 mile trail run I felt a cramp in my left hamstring. I didn't think much of it. I thought at worst I just pulled it a bit. Long story short it turns out to be a high hamstring tendonitis issue. After a few weeks of trying to work through it and easy runs I had to stop completely.

8 weeks of PT, ultrasound, ART therapy, several deep tissue massages and I feel some days like I'm 90% back and other days it just still hurts. Frustrating. Everyone who has had the same issue says that it really takes 6 months to get better. But I don't have 6 months. I have 2 months! Buckeye 50K in July. And I'm running it. Or crawling it.

It's time to start easing back into the training. Of course it would be helpful if one of two things happened. 1) stop raining or 2) warm up! I could live with either option. But seriously this winter was long and cold enough. Last year we were dying in the heat already training for Buckeye in May. Maybe this means that we will have a cool race in July.

I'm heading to our weekly Trail group run tomorrow night at Rocky River Nature Center. I'm expecting not to feel 100%. But 90% would be nice. Keeping the fingers crossed!