A week after pulling my hamstring

One week ago today I was running in the canyon when I experienced a cramp behind and a little above my knee. It came out of nowhere and wasn’t associated with any sort of specific exertion. Initially I figured that it was pretty hot and I hadn’t brought any water and that dehydration may have been a factor (and indeed it may have been). But after a couple of days still experiencing the tightness I began to think differently. It appeared that I had done something to my hamstring again. This being the second time in the last couple months I have had issues here and the problems I have been having in my hips (specifically right side) has really gotten me questioning how much I can run anymore. A huge part of me says BS and that my age and the ms have nothing to do with this, but I think maybe I need to reevaluate what I can do successfully in the future. There is another huge part of my thinking that says this is just an injury that I need to get through and that rest is my best approach. After pondering this I think a combo is probably the best approach and that I need to at least cut back on my running until I can put the hamstring and hip issues in the past.

As far as the hip issues go I am starting to think that the zero drop shoes are part of the problem. Being that I run with a half inch lift to correct for a shorter leg the zero drop shoes are having me hit on the forefront of my feet and erasing the alignment benefit of the lift. I think that my zero-drop feet falls are landing with my hips being out of alignment. With my focus on a mid-strike I would think this issue would be alleviated somewhat, but I also have found myself hitting on the balls of my feet rather that a mid-strike. So I am going to go back to my old standard running shoes and see how they feel over time. My run today was in my old aisics and the felt pretty good. I definitely felt the smaller toe box (I really liked the larger toe box of the Altras) but overall things felt good.

I am thinking that I will try to limit my running a bit this summer and see how things go. For right now I want to keep my running to every other day so I don’t over do anything. Today’s run was just under 5 miles and I really want to become satisfied with shorter runs. Also I will be going quite a bit slower for now. We’ll see how things go.

Six runs in a row in the NW

I say six, but it is really seven in a row as one of the days I ran twice. Since getting back to the NW I have really been enjoying the lower altitude. Breathing has been easier in general and my times seem to have benefited from the 10 days at a mile high altitude.

I have been doing a good job of alternating the quality runs with recovery runs. I think this has had a huge impact on how successful these six runs have been. I don’t feel exhausted at all despite doing a quality run this morning. The other positive aspect has been the cool weather, but I don’t think that has too much to do with things as I ran a couple of days in the heat.

I have been pretty happy with myself and pushing the pace at several times during these runs. The tempo run that I did as part of my two-a-day workout felt really good at the speed I did the first two miles (sub 8 min miles). I also got in a 440 workout that went pretty well. I didn’t really push the speed for that run, but I felt like it went well. I was tired, but not deathly so. Today’s run to Mt. Tabor also had some good fast pace elements. I pushed the first two miles a bit and did solid 8:45 min miles. The two miles of climbing were quite a bit slower, but I was able to pick up the pace for the final portions.

One of the weird things about this string of good runs is that I am doing it with a slight strain to my left upper hamstring. It could also be a gluteus strain, but hamstring specific stretches that I have been doing really seem to pull at the affected area. The strain seems to really only be an issue at the start of my runs, say the first two miles. Then the pain seems to fade away. I could feel myself holding back on a smooth flow, sort of a choppy pace. I think at one point I even was ding some injury to my other side. I have been working on the area with stretching and Arnica gel. It seems to have been working as today I had no pain at all.