Injured

Well, at the back of my mind these past three or four years, I’ve felt quite pleased with myself that I’ve never had a running injury. I’ve had falling injuries, which just made me feel clumsy. But no actual running injuries. Well, it’s official today - I am indeed injured. I guess I should finally feel like a real runner.

Following the pain in my hip that began on the 24^th of April, I finally went to a sports doctor today after my many self-diagnoses have lead me nowhere. First, I thought it was ITBS, and then I thought it was getting better and just attributed the problem to my shoes. When it flared up again on Monday night’s group run, I made the doctor’s appointment for today. Online last night, I had read about bursitis, and my symptoms were in keeping with this condition, except that I’m not a woman, or “the elderly” who are generally affected the most by the inflammation of the bursa. That said, this morning the doctor diagnosed me with a textbook case of bursitis.

Going on referrals from my fellow running club members, I went to this guy because he’s a triathlete and might therefore value the whole marathon training idea. This seemed to be the case, and happily, the words “stop running” or “no you can’t run your marathon” never left his mouth. He did say that hard workouts (speed work, hill training, etc.) would aggravate the condition, but if I religiously stretched, iced, stretched, iced, stretched, and stretched some more, it should go away. All that and pop a lot of ibuprofen. That failing, he said a shot of cortisone would do the trick, but just the idea of that makes me wince.

Having just begun my taper on Monday, I'm hoping that I can get rid of this before Vermont. Of course, I still have to run a 45-mile week this week.

And of course “hard workouts” likely includes the 5K on Sunday, but I’m much too stubborn to not do it.