Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have our first marathon training injury for this training cycle! Yesterday, during a steady run on a treadmill, I threw in a couple of fartlek sprints. I felt fine, but when I went to mark my split time for the completion of the fourth mile, I thought I felt some pain in my groin. By 4.5 miles it was a terribly persistent, 6/10 pain and had generalized more to the back of my leg. I stopped prematurely (was supposed to run 5 miles, but didn’t feel it was worth pushing the extra half of a mile), stretched without relief, and went home. I sat on a bag of ice and took ibuprofen, but still no relief. I went to work, had a difficult time with walking, stair climbing, etc, came home early, pretty much sat on ice on and off throughout the day, continued with the NSAIDs, and still no relief.
Today I am supposed to be on call, but (fortunately, I think) my chief resident sent me home and brought in a replacement as the pain had become excrutiating by mid-morning. So again, this is day 2 of NSAIDs and sitting on ice. The pain is even more localized now to the medial portion of the back of my leg and runs up in that same medial path to the insertion at the ischial spine. I have been reading about sports injuries on Injuredrunner.com and Emedicine, which have both been helpful with suggesting strengthening rehabilitation exercises. I was supposed to run a 5k this weekend, but I’m sitting it out until next week when I may try some gentle runs again. Fortunately, the Portland Marathon is still sixteen weeks away, and my level of fitness is good – I’m going to try to maintain that through the weekend on the elliptical. We’ll see how it goes.