Coming back from an injury

*disclaimer* this post is kind of long and is mainly to document overcoming my hip flexor injury.

Read at your own risk ;)

Saturday I decided to test my fitness- mainly to see where I'm at so i can "push comfortably hard" for the Shamrock Shuffle this weekend.

Maybe I should have looked up "coming back from an injury" before my own little experiment, but I suppose every injury and person is different, so I would have done my own thing anyways. *I also know my limits, and myself well enough to not push too hard and re-injure anything*

Shamrock test run:

1st .25 @ 9:00 pace. Felt great so I continued on for next .5 mile at 8:30 pace. Felt great so I continued on at 7:50-8:20 pace for the rest of the 5 miles.

Final result:

5 miles in 40:29, about 1:40 faster than my Shamrock time from last year.

It wasn't easy, the gym was on the warm side, and I have not done any speed work in 2+ months. But, I have been cycling on a hill setting for an average of 40:00 minutes a day for 6 days a week (with about 10 miles of running a week mixed in)so I feel I haven't lost too much fitness.

After Saturdays run, the test wasn't quite over. In fact, the biggest test would be Sunday to see how I felt when i woke up. Sunday morning I only felt stiff, with some tightness in my left calf. The hip flexor still is not 100%, but I rarely notice it walking or running. It is only while doing some light hip flexor stretching that I notice it still has more discomfort than the left leg.

Success!

I'm confident I can start slowly building back running miles and some speed into my workouts without further damage to my hip.

I'll also continue:

-icing after workouts

-foam rolling and TP therapy on the calf. Also use of the stick.

-resistance band hip exercises

-Stretching during work, as well as home

- will include the Myrtl routineto strengthen my hips.

-use of KT tape on the hip flexor possibly for the shamrock shuffle. I'll need to experiment with it this week first.

Final thoughts:

I think a lot of good has come out of this injury. I am now diligent about icing and using the resistance bands post workout. Also, the addition of the Myrtl routine should strengthen my weak hips so that I can prevent other problems from happening in the future. If I hadn't injured myself by over stretching 2+ months ago, I wouldn't be so concerned about hips- an area extremely important to running and an extremely neglected area by runners which can cause all kinds of havoc for us.













- xaar