I am so fortunate to be able to train and compete at my age without serious injury. In fact, I've rarely had an injury that keeps me from my training. Is it because I don't push the envelope?
Well, last week I was pushing to do some outstanding intervals on my fartlek run. I have a half marathon coming up in 2 weeks (yikes!) and although it's not an A race, I would like to run a PR. Is it important - I say No, but inside I say Yes. So in trying so hard, I have hurt my right hip. I don't know why - but it made me cry. And now I'm worried that I won't recover in time to run/finish the half marathon in 2, count them 2 weeks.
What do you do? Since I never really have to cope with an injury - how do you cope with an injury? If it hadn't hurt so bad, there is no way I would've been sitting in my house on a sunny 65 degree day - but I couldn't really move - that's how bad it hurt.
I've been really motivated by other athletes' blogs - where they are taking it to the next level, finding the wizard, breaking through.... I don't think I've really worked very hard at hitting those types of levels because honestly, I really hate pain. But, I really am competitive enough to try to improve every race and not improving actually is a different kind of pain that might be worse than the physical.
For me, every workout provides some type of pain. At 54 years, getting out of bed causes some discomfort. Hell, laying in bed causes some discomfort - but it's not the kind of pain that you worry about. I didn't really feel like I was pushing all that hard when running - but I became injured nonetheless. So how do you find that happy medium? What is the secret?
1 year ago
