I’ll be honest with you guys. I really didn’t want to write this post this week because there’s nothing left to shake out.
After giving my strained hip flexor four more days off from running, and doing all the functional strength exercises Avery included in my training calendar, and being extremely cautious about engaging in any activity that might possibly in any way makes things worse – no matter how much fun they seemed at the time – I’m still injured.
The maddening part of this experience is that I felt pretty good when I went out for a 4-mile run on Sunday. If I had to put a percentage on things, I’d go so far as to claim my hip was 90-95 percent healed. Unfortunately, 90-95 isn't 100 percent, and those four miles were about 3.5 more than my hip wanted to absorb.
That is to say, I knew within a half mile of starting my run that it wasn’t going to go as well as I had hoped. Even though there were a handful of sublime moments – it was soooooo good being out in the crisp morning air – my body never truly felt comfortable during the run.
Another way of looking at my current predicament is that I knew it was a bad idea to continue after that first half mile and I did it anyway. You know what? I’d probably do it again even though grocery shopping with my wife turned into an exquisitely sore and painful experience.
Before yelling at me for failing to practice what I preach in this newsletter about listening to your body, rest assured that A) Lena already did and B) I didn’t get to this point without an insanely stubborn streak. That, plus a tolerance for pain developed over years and years of grinding it out under adverse conditions probably hasn’t done me any favors the past few weeks.
Why is it that your biggest strength can also become your biggest weakness? That’s the plot line of just about every Greek tragedy, and my hip injury is just another allegory projected on the wall of life.
Regardless, what's done is done and I’m right back where I was the last two times I tried to come back from this annoyingly frustrating ailment: Waiting for the pain to go away so I can get back to doing the one thing I want to be doing more than anything else in the world. Sigh.
My only recourse is to restart the healing process yet again with rest, lowkey stretching, and strength training exercises. The one resolution I’m taking from this latest setback is no more false starts. I’m not running again until there’s absolutely zero pain, soreness, or tightness in the hip flexor region.
Just because I can’t run doesn’t mean you can’t get in your miles. In fact, given my current state of atrophy, I’d like nothing more than to live vicariously through all of you at the moment. From now through Thanksgiving, let’s make an effort to raise our collective running up one notch.
Whether that means developing a running habit, adding suitable amounts of mileage and/or intensity to your routine, or training for a PR, there’s always room for fitness improvements. Call it the RP Level Up Challenge. We’ll have more details later this week for all our subscribers.
Until then, please get out there and enjoy your runs. Let me know how it’s going by dropping into the comments or hitting reply to this email. You can always hit me up on Twitter @pflanns if that’s where you like to hang out.
The greatest gratification this newsletter brings is when it inspires someone to dig deep, train smart, and enjoy what they’re doing. In this time of my own doubt and uncertainty, I’m counting on all of you to inspire me.
Right there with you, Paul. After a really great July and August of training some speed, I aggravated what a massage therapist (and strength coach) guessed was my TFL in mid-September. In fact, I actually did it in mid-August and just kept relying on it to warm up and go away. But it came back with a vengeance two weeks ago, and, after a really healthy first 9 months of the year, my volume took its first big hit.
There’s nothing like the mental anguish of an injury that, in the scope of things, is relatively minor, but only heals by taking break from running.
Damn, sorry to hear about the setback. I went through that in 2022 with my first attempt at training for a marathon and the amount of time it took for me to recover from IT band syndrome was driving me bananas.
This past weekend was a letdown for me, but after some conversations with other folks, I'm feeling better about it. I went for a 10-mile run with 3 miles warm-up, 4 miles at tempo, 3 miles cool-down. I knew as soon as I left that the humidity was gonna be a bit rough. 2 miles into the tempo, I was struggling. I ended up walking portions. DC got hit with a late September couple days of brutal humidity, and folks around town were talking about it, so I didn't feel so bad. I'd thought about doing the run on a treadmill, but decided to give it a try and learned my lesson. But it's not the end of the world.
Thankfully, it looks like it should cool down a bit this weekend, so fingers crossed that holds up.