Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Ruh-Roh

I'm on Day 12 of Danica's 40 day challenge and I'm really loving it! I'm prone to overuse injuries, so I was a little nervous about hurting myself [my IT bands and I are just barely on speaking terms again], but so far, so good!

That does not, unfortunately, mean that I'm not injured. Ish. Maybe. Yesterday I did speed intervals for the first time in a long time. It felt awesome, but I figured I'd feel it today. My hips/hamstring/awkward under-butt muscles have been really tight lately, so I made sure to ice them after my workout. I went to bed feeling ok and thinking maybe, just maybe, I'd be fine.

Fast forward to this morning [when I woke up way late, but that's a different story]. As I scrambled to get out the door I realized that my legs felt totally fine. A little heavy, but not sore at all. Then it happened. I reached up to grab something in my closet and I felt a weird pain in my lower back. A couple of years ago, I was hit by a car [long story, not fun] and I had some lower back issues for a while after that, but I haven't had any real back pain in a long time. This pain didn't feel quite the same, but it's located in about the same spot. It feels a little bit like a pulled muscle. It only hurts when I stretch or move in certain directions. I don't think it's because of my running - it didn't bother me at all last night. If I had to guess, I'd say I twisted funny in my sleep.

I threw a Salonpas patch on it and it felt a little better, but it was still kind of twingey. I decided I'd test out running and if it hurt at all I would stop. 3 miles later and it didn't hurt at all, but I was very aware of the way I was twisting my torso. I tried to keep my upper body as straight forward as possible. So, really, my quasi-ish injury is totally helping my form. Score! I'm a little annoyed that I was trying so hard to NOT get a running injury that I ended up with a non-running injury. At least it doesn't seem to be hampering my running.

Have you ever had a non-running injury slow down your training? I don't even like it when colds get in the way!

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