My effort to restart this running blog last summer was in good faith, but I got injured a few weeks after my last post. It was my most serious running injury to date, which means I've been quite lucky given all I've put my body through. On October 19, 2022, I felt some tightness in what I thought was my right glute as I finished up a standard fartlek workout. I then stretched a bit and did a cool down jog back home. I was training for the Rehoboth Beach Seashore Marathon at the beginning of December but knew I needed to take some time to let whatever this was recover. For the next two and a half weeks, I only went on a few short jogs of 2-3 miles to check on things and spent a lot of time at the PT and chiropractor and doing the exercises and stuff they assigned me. Eventually I decided that whatever it was - I still didn't really know what had happened - was ok enough and started easing my way back into running in hopes of maybe still doing Rehoboth but mainly looking toward the Boston Marathon in the Spring, which I had just registered for. I still thought I had strained something or other, probably several things, in my glute. The PTs were giving me lots of glute exercises, sticking pins in my butt, and telling me to roll out my glutes a lot. But they also said my hamstring was involved, because it attaches up there in the area where the allegedly strained glute muscles criss-cross. At a certain point, as I was getting back into running in mid-November, I started thinking it odd that they didn't give me any hamstring exercises along with all the glute stuff, so I added in some hamstring exercises of my own. I told the PTs about this, and they said good idea. The exercise I added was hamstring curls using a swiss ball. At first I used both legs at the same time, but soon I was doing single leg hamstring curls with the swiss ball. I keep meticulous logs, which indicate that I did the single-leg curls on three occasions. Jumping to the punchline: I think what happened on October 19 was that (perhaps among other things) a small tear formed in my proximal hamstring tendon, which is way up under the glute max in the hip area. Over the next few weeks it started to heal a bit, but then each time I did those single leg hamstring curls I tore it a bit more. In the second half of November I started getting more and more pain at my sit bone on the right side. Eventually I could barely tolerate sitting down and spent all my time either standing or lying down. Running became impossible. My last run was on December 3, the day of the Rehoboth marathon (which I did not try to run). A bit after that I stopped going to the PT and instead went to my primary care physician, who ordered an MRI. It hurt all the time and I was having trouble concentrating on anything. On December 21 I finally got the MRI, which showed proximal hamstring tendinosis with high-grade partial tearing. I was later told by a different doctor who did an ultrasound that I had roughly a 50% tear in my right hamstring tendon.
I probably had tendinosis up there for years without realizing it. All the PTs and the chiropractor I went to didn't catch it. Hamstring strengthening exercises could have stopped it progressing, but I didn't know and never did them. Eventually the tendon degraded enough that an ordinary workout was enough to tear it a bit. Even if I hadn't torn it more by doing an exercise that was too aggressive (which is what I think happened), it would not have gotten better on its own and would have just torn again from something else without a proper strengthening program. So the silver lining is that the painful tear got my attention and led me to get the MRI. Now I know what the problem is, and it isn't anything to do with glutes. When I posted my MRI result on Strava, lots of other runners told me they had dealt with this sort of injury. I asked them all how they dealt with it and got lots of helpful advice. I wanted to avoid surgery if at all possible, and I figured the way to do that was to start with absolute rest for as long as necessary, and then very, very patiently to follow a rehab protocol - which these days you can easily find online and do yourself if you have some experience and access to the relevant equipment. (I was no longer in the mood to trust PTs). I ended up taking around 6 weeks of absolute rest. The area mostly stopped hurting over the first 2 weeks or so, after which I began doing some slow walking, which gradually became more comfortable over the next couple weeks. When I judged that no further improvement was forthcoming from rest and slow walking, on January 18 I began following the rehab protocol I had decided upon after reading and watching practically everything on the internet about this injury. I also started walking a bit faster and later introduced some run-walking until I worked up to a continuous run of 3 miles on February 4. The exercise protocol I followed was solid. For good measure (and to keep myself from going crazy) I also did a lot of strengthening of other muscles, including upper body stuff (which may have contributed to some of the weight I gained during this period). Unfortunately I overlooked calves, though, and by the time I noticed this oversight it was too late. My hamstring held strong, but a few weeks into my return to running I strained my soleus, which had atrophied from all that rest. This too may have been a blessing in disguise, because I had been so surprised by my hamstring's progress that I started thinking I could run Boston after all. The previous year I had taken a month totally off after straining the same calf and then ran Shamrock 10 weeks after I started running again, and Boston was also around 10 weeks after I started running again this time around. But it was not to be, and frankly I wasn't too disappointed. I had gotten a bit ahead of myself anyway. The calf strain dragged on frustratingly long, but it gave me more time to strengthen my hamstring and shifted my focus away from the next race to just getting back into healthy training.
It was May by the time my calf finally chilled out. Since then I've gradually worked my way back into things. In the past I had always done hill repeats to prepare my muscles for workouts, but my hamstring needed to avoid hills at first. I still don't do hill repeats, but last month I was finally able to do some harder runs over hilly terrain in Greece. When I returned to the US, I did a couple club races, a 5k and an 8k, for the first time since the injury. I'm predictably slower and still getting back into shape, but my muscles are holding up. I continue to do hamstring exercises 2-3 times per week. When I reached the milestone of 50 miles per week for the past two weeks, I figured it was time to resuscitate this running blog. Daily details for those two weeks are below.
My plan from here is basically to continue returning to the sort of training and racing I love. Last year I deferred my registrations for both the Annapolis Ten Miler in late August and the Rehoboth Marathon in early December. So I plan to run both of those this year, as well as the Army Ten Miler as usual. I'm thinking of the A10 in two weeks as sort of the next hard training effort after the 5k and 8k club races. After that I'll shift more fully into marathon mode with longer workouts and some pace work during long runs. I hope to race the ATM in October and not just treat that as another hard training effort, but we'll see how things go.
Before tearing my hamstring, I felt like my running was kind of on autopilot for a while. I set some PRs in 2019 but then the pandemic happened and for some reason my heart wasn't altogether in it when things opened back up again. I was going through the motions but didn't really know why or care much. But getting injured and thinking I might never be able to run again put some fire in my belly. I generally need to hold myself back since I'm the sort who will simply run myself into the ground, and my body already has a lot of wear and tear on it. But it's wonderful to feel that drive and love running again. I don't have to do this or that workout today. I get to go out and run now, and it's glorious. I want to run as fast and far as my body will let me. I'm thankful for what my body can do and accept its limits, but I'm going to push them, still.
Mo: 5 miles
Tu: 8.5 miles with 10 x .25 miles (1:15 rests)
We: 6.5 miles
Th: 14 miles @ 7:49/mi.
Fr: Off
Sa: 6.5 miles
Su: Steve Thompson 8k in 34:38
Week total: 50 miles
Mo: 5.5 miles
Tu: 6.5 miles
We: 10 miles with 3 x (1, 2, 3 min.) with equal recoveries
Th: 7 miles
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 15 miles @ 7:54/mi.
Su: Off
Week total: 50 miles
