March Race

I did it!  I survived the Warrior Dash.  The week before the race, I had made up my mind not to do the run because I was still having pain.  Saturday afternoon I talked to some people who had finished the race that morning and they had a lot of fun and thought I should do it.  Dave ran Saturday evening and after hearing about his race, I decided I would go and just take it slow and have fun.  I ran with a friend from high school and having her next to me for the beginning of the race help to push me through the initial soreness in my leg.  I was going very slow and yet still passing people, so that was encouraging to me.  My goal was to finish in under an hour and my time was 47 minutes.  I lost count of the amount of obstacles on the course but the highlights included climbing a steep mud mountain and then sliding down the opposite side, jumping over fire, climbing through a pitch black tunnel, crawling through a mud pond which had barbed wire in it, swimming in a lake and having to jump over floating logs.  At the end I was completely muddy and exhausted but I am so glad I did the race!  If you want to see pictures, go here and enter in my bib #- 31464.  Dave's bib # is 31463.

The verdict is in!

I finally broke down and went to the doctor.  I tried running again yesterday morning and didn't make it down the street before I had shooting pain again.  I decided to go to an orthopedic surgeon and I am so glad I did.  I was in and out of the office in half an hour with my diagnosis and I am already feeling better.  The doctor took an x-ray, asked some questions, moved some muscles around and concluded that I have a strained abductor muscle.  I am supposed to hold off on running for 2 more weeks, which is not so great, and take anti-inflammatory medicine for the rest of the week.  For some crazy reason I thought Tylenol was anti-inflammatory and so when I first hurt myself, that is what I took.  I took some Advil yesterday and actually noticed considerable pain relief by the end of the day.  If I have not had a noticeable change in pain and ability to run without pain, I will go back to the doctor to get an MRI that will look for a possible stress fracture.  The doctor didn't think I had one, but he couldn't rule it out without an MRI and because of my build, I am more prone to stress fractures.  I am still planning on running the Warrior Dash in March as long as I am feeling better in the next 2 weeks.  I am going stir crazy not being able to run though, especially because of the beautiful weather we are having and the fact that it has been getting much lighter earlier in the morning.  I am definitely going to be adding in a lengthy warm up to my running routine.  I may even consider some yoga to help with it, but I find yoga hard to do because I don't have the patients for it!