Choices

The update on the hip or piriformis or glute or whatever I have going on is this -- I did a super short run yesterday morning and did not like how it felt. It started fine then hurt up the outside of my hip. It was early, I was half asleep, so I'm trying to remember what I felt exactly.

I have no pain walking, no pain jumping up and down, no pain sitting. No out-of-the-ordinary pain rolling or stretching. In fact, most normal people would not notice a thing. But they are not expecting to run a 10-mile race tomorrow with the larger expectation of running Boston in 8 weeks.

I can't recall anything specific that would have brought this on. I've been icing, gently stretching, taking ibuprofen, and added retail therapy - buying a balance ball to use as my office chair.

I feel like I've been sucker-punched. It's hard not to have flashbacks to missing Boston last year.

So now I'm faced with some choices:

1. Run the 10-miler tomorrow and see how it goes, being prepared to bail
2. Cut back to the 5K tomorrow and see how it goes, being prepared to bail
3. Bail on the whole thing

With options #1 and #2 it will be hard not to be distracted and to keep that from taking away from my performance.

I have fears of my training being disrupted in some significant way.

I saw the chiropractor yesterday and he said I was most definitely out of alignment. He thought I would be OK for Saturday. But he is not looking at soft tissue so much. I'm seeing my sports med D.O. later this morning just to bounce it off her. She is really good at putting me in all sorts of strange positions to zero in on the problem area.

I have no doubts that if tomorrow was my "A" race I could put it out of my mind and go out there and tear it up. But it's not. So choices must be made. It may be a game-time decision.

This is the part of being an athlete that I hate, but I know it is part of the package deal. Blah.