Inside the Injury

Injury sounds like a big word for what might be a muscle pull. But it's the right word, I think. It's different than "sore" .. we all get sore. And we all know the difference between good sore (yeah, I can tell I did 100 extra sit-ups yesterday ... I can feel it in my abs!) that you wear like a badge of honor and a bad sore that signals a problem.

I'm giving this injury three more days before a trip to the doctor. Until then, this is what I know:

1. Every workout is important because you don't know when an injury will sideline you. So, phoning one in is kind of stupid. It might be your "last" for a while,so to speak. (And this sounds way more dramatic than I intend it to. I'm sure I'll live this time, LOL!)

So you should really make it a good one, right? But if you do have a bad workout, it's still better than no workout.

2. Working out smart is really important ... perhaps more important as we get older ... and creaky-er, and achy-er. I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out "what" I did wrong with this hip deal. To be honest, I'm not sure.

I know that my training schedule for the half worked in three rest days per week and in the past two weeks, I was on a two-rest-days per week pace. But at the same time, the official training had me logging in many more miles than I have been putting in recently. I also tried some new moves on my exercise ball the night before the hip event, but that simply couldn't be it ... I think.

3. Heed the warnings. I had some achiness (is this a word?) in my hip a couple of weeks earlier. And, I did experience an overall stiffness after consecutive running days, which had never happened before. But I assumed it was because I was trying to ramp my miles back up. I should have paid more attention and slowed down, taken days off, Adviled up ... something. I should not have ignored it or brushed it off.

In the end, the injuries are part of the process, unfortunately. And you learn to deal with them, plan for them in a way, as they cycle in and out. And overcome them ... hopefully increasing the time between them and the severity of them.