Hello. My name is Greg. But you already knew that.
It's been a long time coming, but today's the day. The last marathon I ran was the California International Marathon (CIM) the first week of December, 2010. Leading up to it, I increasingly noticed a problem in my hip, which was annoying, but I could deal with. It was certainly something that would need to be looked at, but I wanted to wait until the marathon was over before seeing the doctor.
I waited a few weeks, but still had issues, so decided I'd go in. I made an appointment with Elite Spinal Care, a sports medicine place in Sacramento, and just before the appointment, had an x-ray done. The x-ray showed nothing.
The doctor started doing regular sessions, using ART techniques and deep tissue massage, but still, there was no relief. Eventually I had an MRI done, and the results: bone bruise in the hip joint. No running, and all indications were that full healing could take up to a year.
Eating badly was a real issue. New Years Day was the worst mentally, I think, in how I was seeing things. Super Bowl Sunday was also a problem. In the end, I had trouble reconciling the necessity of eating right with exercise, culminating in completely backing off of all exercise. Once I gave into that one, the healing began.
This meant the Avenue of the Giants Marathon in May was out. Of course, my camping reservations had already been made, so I volunteered to help at the race. They gladly let me be the guy who told people they were too slow and wouldn't be allowed to finish! So that was fun.
I started exercising again, but the bad habits acquired during the injury made the morning workouts sporadic at best. Finally, I started running again.
I averaged 25 miles a week for a few months, and was starting to feel comfortable with pushing the pace, when I had a recurrence of pain in the hip. At first I thought I might be wrong, but after a few days, it was obviously a problem again, so I backed off running.
That brings us to now. I had already planned on running 3 miles today, and happened to be looking at Hal Higdon's marathon plans, when it hit me: the novice plans are perfect for a slow increase of mileage without pushing the pace too much and risking injury! So at 5pm, I texted Tony Bevis, and ran the first run in the plan with him this evening.
See the activity on RunSaturday
| Type: | Run - General |
| Duration: | 0:33:24 |
| Distance: | 3.02 mi |
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