Ouch!

Well, this week I've been struggling with a tight hamstring. I didn't have ANY leg issues during my two races last weekend. I felt good on Monday but was cautious and didn't run (should have stretched or something - what was I thinking)? On Tuesday, I noticed my left hamstring had a big knot right in the middle of it. I noticed it a couple miles into my run (6 miles easy). I stretch after the run and then that night. I felt like it was just a little tight and would go away. The next day I ran a 9 mile run (hilly) and took it slow. By about 6 miles, I was stuggling again. I walked 8 miles into it because I started to get nervous. That night, I had Danielle put some Icy Hot on and massage it into my hammy. She worked the knot out pretty good. Thursday, I took the day off (somewhat). I was going to be helping at Danielle's track meet so I wore sweat pants and jogged a slow mile around the track, stretching after each lap. My leg felt pretty good. I needed that warm up because Danielle was running the 3200 and I would be running around (back and forth across the track cheering her on). I actually didn't do a lot of that as it turned out.

> See my impression of Danielle's race at the end <

I felt ok Thursday evening and stretched a bit more.

Friday, I wanted to test my leg to see if I could run long on the weekend. I decided to run with the track team. That way I could do a slow 6 and not hurt myself. I was doing ok until the last part of the run. I picked it up a bit on the last uphill and I could feel my hammy give out again. I stopped and walked. I went home and took a hot shower and had Danielle try to massage it out again. I called Van to tell her that I wasn't going to run with her in the morning. I really needed to take it easy and just stretch it out.

Saturday I ended up taking the track team out to Male Valley (Landsburg park) to run on the Cedar River Trail. It was just girls - the boys wimped out. I had them run 4 miles only since they had run 6 the day before and that was long for them. I made Danielle run 6 miles with me though. My hammy was sore but I could run slow. Anytime I tried to pick it up/accelerate, I could feel it sieze up. I'm sitting here with a heating pad under my leg as I type - feels good.


I'll take tomorrow completely off and do some stretching. Then I'll do some short stretch runs next week and hope that the hammy heals up some before my next race (100K - April 1st). This might actually be a blessing in disguise. I'm ok running slow and that should keep me slower at the start of the race. If I can run without my hammy siezing up, I'll be happy. If it siezes up, I'll have to walk ... depending on when that would happen, I may have to drop. As you can tell, I'm preparing my mind for a possible DNF. I'd rather DNF than injure myself and not be able to run in June.

Right now, it's just a tight muscle, not a muscle pull. I didn't traumatize it so I'm not sure why it got so tight in the first place. Two weeks ago, I had the same type of thing happen with my calf muscle. That went away with stretching and rest. Hopefully, this will be the same.


The 3200



Danielle and I discussed her strategy after her last race and again earlier in the week. I told her that she gets behind too early and it makes it tough to get back into the race. I knew that there was one girl on the other team who had a much better time than her but their second gal was about the same level if not just a bit faster (on paper that is). So, D needed to stick to the second runner as long as she could and see what she could do after 6 laps.



Again, things didn't go as planned and both the girls from the other team ran together with D sticking right there with them.




They went through the 1600 at 6:24 - a bit fast for D but better than the 6:10-6:15 she would do last year and then die. The faster girl on the other team made a move on the 5th lap and D responded as did their #2 girl. On the 6th lap, the leader started to pull away but looked like she was struggling. D looked like she clearly had the drop on #2 but she was still within striking distance so I told her to close the gap on #1. She worked on lap 7 and #2 gave up. I tried to make sure D did not look back and told her the girl behind gave up and that #1 was struggling. D pretty much kept in step with #1, who now had about a 20 meter lead, as they both picked up the pace. D made a run for her but #1 was pulling away. With 150 meters to go, D took a sneak peak over he shoulder (I gotta break her for that).



She finished in 2nd with a 13:21.4 ... a mere 0.4 seconds off her PR from last year and 35 seconds better than last week. I don't know what #1's time was but was about 10 seconds ahead. D beat #2 by 80 meters - so didn't need to look back.

I think D can run under 13 minutes but needs to keep the training up and race like she did on Thursday.


*tc