Monday, March 19, 2012

Coming back from an injury

*disclaimer* this post is kind of long and is mainly to document overcoming my hip flexor injury.

Read at your own risk ;)

Saturday I decided to test my fitness- mainly to see where I'm at so i can "push comfortably hard" for the Shamrock Shuffle this weekend.

Maybe I should have looked up "coming back from an injury" before my own little experiment, but I suppose every injury and person is different, so I would have done my own thing anyways. *I also know my limits, and myself well enough to not push too hard and re-injure anything*

Shamrock test run:

1st .25 @ 9:00 pace. Felt great so I continued on for next .5 mile at 8:30 pace. Felt great so I continued on at 7:50-8:20 pace for the rest of the 5 miles.

Final result:

5 miles in 40:29, about 1:40 faster than my Shamrock time from last year.

It wasn't easy, the gym was on the warm side, and I have not done any speed work in 2+ months. But, I have been cycling on a hill setting for an average of 40:00 minutes a day for 6 days a week (with about 10 miles of running a week mixed in)so I feel I haven't lost too much fitness.

After Saturdays run, the test wasn't quite over. In fact, the biggest test would be Sunday to see how I felt when i woke up. Sunday morning I only felt stiff, with some tightness in my left calf. The hip flexor still is not 100%, but I rarely notice it walking or running. It is only while doing some light hip flexor stretching that I notice it still has more discomfort than the left leg.

Success!

I'm confident I can start slowly building back running miles and some speed into my workouts without further damage to my hip.

I'll also continue:

-icing after workouts

-foam rolling and TP therapy on the calf. Also use of the stick.

-resistance band hip exercises

-Stretching during work, as well as home

- will include the Myrtl routineto strengthen my hips.

-use of KT tape on the hip flexor possibly for the shamrock shuffle. I'll need to experiment with it this week first.

Final thoughts:

I think a lot of good has come out of this injury. I am now diligent about icing and using the resistance bands post workout. Also, the addition of the Myrtl routine should strengthen my weak hips so that I can prevent other problems from happening in the future. If I hadn't injured myself by over stretching 2+ months ago, I wouldn't be so concerned about hips- an area extremely important to running and an extremely neglected area by runners which can cause all kinds of havoc for us.













- xaar

4 comments:

  1. glad you are coming back and learned from this! i'm pretty sure every injury we get is a learning experience. even if it totally sucks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yay, this all good news. I am glad that you are feeling better and running again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congrats! I am so glad you are feeling better! I'll be looking for you next weekend as you breeze right on by me at the Shuffle!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Glad you are back to running and feeling good. It is always a little nerve racking coming back from an injury, wondering if it will come back. Sounds like you have a good plan though, YAY!

    ReplyDelete