If there was one thing I definitely wanted to do the weekend of my 27th birthday, it was run a marathon. Unfortunately, after last week's River Towns Marathon, I developed some right leg issues and had to forego this weekend's race.
Right leg aside, my recovery actually went picture perfect and all of the residual soreness went away by Tuesday. I doubled up on PT exercises and foam rolling, slept every night in my compression shorts and sleeves, iced all of my aching parts, and even got a sports massage on Wednesday.
I did run 3 miles on the treadmill on Thursday and while they weren't explicitly painful, they just didn't feel right. When I woke up Friday morning my right quad definitely felt inflamed and at that point I decided to drop out of Sunday's race. It was a really hard decision to make, but when I started bargaining with myself about how I would let myself start the race, but promise to drop out if it started hurting, I realized I shouldn't be running in the first place. My races this month were all about having fun, but how can I have fun if I spend a whole race worrying about whether something will start hurting too much? If you think there is a good chance you will DNF, save yourself the prolonged injury and just back off.
I have a doctor's appointment this Thursday and hopefully we will get things sorted out. I've never really had a right leg problem before. It's always in my left. And this time the pain isn't in one specific place. It comes in waves of tingling and moderate spurts of pain over the top and interior side of my quad and sometimes in my IT band right above the knee. I'm still continuing all of my hip strengthening exercises that solved my IT band pain in the winter and I've also been rolling out my lower back, which has helped immensely. I'm thinking it might be nerve related, but we shall see.
Despite my running plans being ruined, I still had an awesome birthday weekend. I had some fun shopping and then Mike took me to my favorite Philly restaurant, Audrey Claire.
Dessert was from Crumbs Cupcakes:
Overall, a great weekend. And, marathon or no marathon, I still got to run one last weekend, so I can't really complain!
Right leg aside, my recovery actually went picture perfect and all of the residual soreness went away by Tuesday. I doubled up on PT exercises and foam rolling, slept every night in my compression shorts and sleeves, iced all of my aching parts, and even got a sports massage on Wednesday.
I did run 3 miles on the treadmill on Thursday and while they weren't explicitly painful, they just didn't feel right. When I woke up Friday morning my right quad definitely felt inflamed and at that point I decided to drop out of Sunday's race. It was a really hard decision to make, but when I started bargaining with myself about how I would let myself start the race, but promise to drop out if it started hurting, I realized I shouldn't be running in the first place. My races this month were all about having fun, but how can I have fun if I spend a whole race worrying about whether something will start hurting too much? If you think there is a good chance you will DNF, save yourself the prolonged injury and just back off.
I have a doctor's appointment this Thursday and hopefully we will get things sorted out. I've never really had a right leg problem before. It's always in my left. And this time the pain isn't in one specific place. It comes in waves of tingling and moderate spurts of pain over the top and interior side of my quad and sometimes in my IT band right above the knee. I'm still continuing all of my hip strengthening exercises that solved my IT band pain in the winter and I've also been rolling out my lower back, which has helped immensely. I'm thinking it might be nerve related, but we shall see.
Despite my running plans being ruined, I still had an awesome birthday weekend. I had some fun shopping and then Mike took me to my favorite Philly restaurant, Audrey Claire.
Dessert was from Crumbs Cupcakes:
Overall, a great weekend. And, marathon or no marathon, I still got to run one last weekend, so I can't really complain!
Sometimes it is hard to make the smarter decision, good for you for doing it! Happy Birthday!
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday!
ReplyDeleteTough choice but you definitely made the right call! Much more fun to enjoy a delicious, relaxing bday dinner than go all the way to Delaware to drop out and maybe even make things worse. Happy birthday and feel better soon!
ReplyDelete