Down and Out

After an injury-free hot streak of over 1.5 years, I have finally been defeated with Greater trochanter pain syndrome.  The week before Gate River, my right glute had a pretty big knot in it and was really tight.  It got a little bit better but a few days later, it came back, much worse.  It would be insanely tight for the first minute or two of my runs, which would give me a pretty noticeable old man limp but once I warmed up, it was fine.

Last Wednesday, when warming up for my track workout, it was much more painful than usual.  After a mile of limping and it not getting any better, I knew it was time to ax the workout. I then went to see Dr. Jeff Kindred at BodyGuard Sports Medicine, so he could look at it with ultrasound and see what showed up. It was my first time seeing him, but I've heard good things about him and he keeps up with modern research and is on top of things. After looking around, he saw some calcification around a tendon in my butt. Obviously you don't want that, so we had to bust that sucker up.  Unfortunately, that involved taking a huge needle and  stabbing it to death for the next couple of minutes, which seemed more like a prison shanking.  It wasn't too bad because I had some Lidocaine in there but I could have gone without the sound effects of it breaking apart, which sounded like Velcro.

Dr. Kindred said it would create a lot of bleeding in the area, which would help speed up the healing process and that I could be sore for 4-5 days.  And man, was he right.  That evening, it felt like I gave birth through my hip (hopefully Mary doesn't read this because I'd probably get tin trouble).  I literally couldn't walk at all, I was in a ton of pain when I was trying to sleep and I was more whiny than usual.

Five days later and I still have a limp going on and obviously, I haven't been able to run yet.  I was hoping to run the Country Music Marathon as a steady long run again, because that's pretty much like the Olympics around here but that's out.  Maybe if I can run within a week, I'll run the half-marathon there, as long as I won't get smoked.

But regardless of when I start to consistently train again, I'm going to end my "season" and do a good base training phase in build-up for my fall marathon.  Looking back at my training, my last non-hurried, solid base training phase was the summer of 2011.  While I feel you need less and less of it as you get more miles in the bank, three years is a long time and it's sometimes good to return to things you haven't done in a while.
So hopefully I stop gimping around soon, can get in some easy mileage and get in 1-2 races a month, used as glorified workouts. And then, go into my speed-training phase fresh, with a nice base behind me so I can run the race I should have at Houston (I'm still pretty bitter about that race).