Speed Bumps

You may have noticed I haven't posted about a run this week. Well...

Apparently last Saturday's awful-feeling run was trying to tell me something. My body is not happy.

After Saturday's run, I nursed some sore muscles and took Sunday to fully rest. Monday, I set out on 2.5 miles with little problem. In fact, it was one of my faster 2.5 miles and I only walked twice for less than 30 seconds each - at the crest of the hill I went up twice.

12:02, 12:22, 6:24 - total of 30:48. It was fine.

Until I got home. As I slowed to a walk and stretched, I had spasms in my back. I stretched and dealt with it - but I've noticed that the pain comes when I am going faster (harder impact) and when I've run up hills. I'm not intentionally trying to speed up. It’s just that running more/walking less has increased my pace a lot on its own. But the problem is - when I’m going this faster pace (from running more) it’s causing a lot more aches and pains, especially in my back. I’ve been comfortable to slightly challenged with the pace in terms of lung capacity and endurance. But when I naturally speed up on level and downhill stretches, I’m feeling a lot more impact. I’ve tried holding back even more on these stretches, knowing that I tend to go faster there, but it hurts my back even more to hold back. I don’t feel like I’m speeding up or notice the faster pace - in fact, I feel like I’m crawling and going slower than 13 most of the time. When trying to hold back and think I’m slowing down to get closer to 13, I still end up near 12-12:30. When I don’t try to hold back and just go, I’m still close to 12-12:30. I get into a minimal effort groove and feel like I’m consistently there when there is no major change in incline. This also varies based on the day lately. Saturday took all-out effort to even go 13, but there was more walking too, and way more variation in incline. The increase in amount of running with no walk intervals is new to me, and is taking a bit of a toll. I’ve never run straight through any run until this past month (usually lungs or nerve pain prevented it). I’ve also never had so much back pain while running as I’ve had in the past two weeks. I've been feeling like I need to strengthen core muscles more to prevent this. I’m just really sore, especially my back. Saturday hurt worse than the half I did in Oct 2017 - but it was also the first time this month that I experienced severe nerve pain while running and was also the first time I tried to run up a huge hill. When I looked back on Monday's run, I had hit a hill twice in that route that I normally run down instead of up. If I go with more hills/inclines, or the steep hill Saturday, that seems to be when the back hurts the most, making me feel like my form is off and the core strength just isn’t there. I feel like I could easily go 5-6 miles running at a 12-12:30 pace right now, if I didn’t have any uphill inclines the entire time, which is never going to happen. So since I can’t run without encountering hills, and hills are hurting my back, I think I need to work on it. And since running more/walking less has made my pace faster, even more so on level and downhill slopes, and it’s making me more sore, especially my back, I think my core needs work.

Along with this came the inevitable, "Don't tell coach or he'll take away miles or runs" - And that’s exactly why I hadn’t really said anything... I don’t want him to pull the extra mile or change what we’re doing.  I told him this but then followed it with - "That being said, you are the coach, and know what you’re doing, so while I may balk and protest, 99% of the time I will listen and comply." I am a planner and get my schedule/routine in my head for several days ahead of time to prep myself for it and feel out how I’m doing medically as I go. I knew going into Saturday that I was making my route harder and probably wasn’t ready for it, but I also knew I was getting bored with my normal route and needed a change-up. As much as I hated it, it helped me pinpoint when and where the soreness was coming from, and helped me figure out when and where things started feeling off. I had already figured on Wednesday’s mile being a simple out and back on Herron, where it’s almost completely level, thus avoiding hills and anything that was gong to create heavy impact. However, I also already bailed on volleyball Tuesday night to give my back an extra day to recover from yesterday. I’m not broken yet, and won’t let it get bad enough to feel that way, but I also don’t want to stop or change things. When things are going well on the run, 2-3 miles is easy, but I don’t think I’m doing enough between runs to help keep it that way. I also had a time crunch and several things going on yesterday when I tried to squeeze my run in, so I didn’t spend as much time on the warmup as I probably should have. Lesson learned the hard way on that one.

Wednesday, I went ahead with the 1 mile run as scheduled and as I had planned. Daniel went with me. He immediately dubbed it the "Sloth Run" as it was so hard to go so slow. We completed the mile in 12:45 (of the planned 14:00). We felt as if we were shuffling so slow that if we attempted to go any slower, we'd no longer be moving forward. It was such an easy run.

And then Thursday happened...

Plan was 2.5 miles. Steady pace around 12:15. Run as much as possible with walking as needed.

Ya'll... I had to bail out on a run. :(

I had to stop running at 1.6. I have double inner ear infections (from sinuses) and started feeling pain in my back on the right side near my kidneys. I didn't want to chance it. I felt fine walking and tried to run again when I started feeling better, but I got the same pain almost immediately so just walked. No pain walking. I ended up going 2.67 miles - walking a mile of it - but I felt awful. The funniest part was - mile 1 was a piece of cake - it was just fine - and was a 12:03 mile. Awesome. Even with walking 1 of the 2.67 miles - my average pace was a 14:38.

However, since Thursday, I have been benched. No running. No working out. No weights. Nothing but rest. It has stunk. Big time. I keep getting told it's just a speed bump to slow me down a bit and regroup, but I hate it. Plus, the rest is not helping the back pain go away - at all. If anything, resting has made it worse. Sometimes I really hate having medical issues and wish my body would just function normally. I just want to be able to run and to enjoy running pain free.

Tomorrow, the plan is to attempt 2.5 again. Today, I plan to stretch like crazy and maybe even get on the elliptical for a very slow mile just to move the running muscles some before going back out tomorrow. I'm almost tempted just to tell myself I'm only doing a mile tomorrow, so that I can wait and decide after that mile if I feel like I can move forward or not.

The best part of this entire ordeal - I had to take Friday off - but then Knox County closed until Thursday - so I have almost an entire week off work to recover and heal. Hopefully the sinuses, ear infections and kidney issues will simmer down in that time and I'll be back to the routine soon.

Until then, struggling to stay positive about the upcoming race season and hoping for the best.